An Australian robot football team have been pipped at the post by a side from the US in the RoboCup grand final.
Roboswift from the University of New South Wales were hampered by glitches. Team member Kenji Brameld says half their robots just shut down.
"We were really surprised when we put the robots on and half of the robots didn't work at the start."
They were beaten by US team Austin Villa 7-3 during the final at the 2016 World Robot Conference in Beijing.
Roboswift's Jeremy Collette says they're disappointed to have lost, but the Americans were a great team.
"We lost to a really good team, the American team was really good, so they deserve to be the winners. We're not sad, but a little bit sad. We had lots of fun."
While a bit slower than a regular football game, there was still plenty of excitement for spectators at the match.
The bots were programmed wirelessly and had to tell each other where the ball was, where their teammates were, who's fallen down - something which happened frequently - and who should go for the ball.
Teams from the United States, China and Australia all competed in the friendly tournament.
Head of the Pre-RoboCup Asia Pacific competition Liu Fei says it's a great platform for students to improve their skills and robo-intelligence knowledge.
"In the aspect of software, or in other words, robotic intelligence, which we are working on, especially for a platform like [RoboCup], robotic intelligence is our future," she says.
"It will push forward our development in artificial intelligence and robots."
It's hoped one day robots can be pitted against humans for a friendly football match.
Newshub.
