Boston Dynamics brings its legged robots to the FIFA World Cup
SMRTR summary
A humanoid robot attempting a "Ghost Rabona" soccer kick is not your typical halftime show. But at the 2026 FIFA World Cup, Boston Dynamics has done exactly that, teaching its Atlas robot to replicate one of soccer's most theatrical trick shots.
The effort required a genuine rethink of how robots learn. The team abandoned years of classical predictive control and started over with reinforcement learning, capturing a skilled soccer player's movements in a motion-capture suit, then running simulations for just hours before Atlas could execute the move. "Practicing the motions for quick footwork is more complex than a backflip," said Alberto Rodriguez, Boston Dynamics' director of robot behavior.
Meanwhile, the company's four-legged Spot robot is walking security perimeters at four venues, including two in Dallas and two at Citi Field in New York, scanning for hazards and suspicious packages using thermal imaging and lidar.
As Rodriguez put it, the robots are "far from doing things that a real soccer player has to do" -- but they're clearly warming up.
SMRTR provides this summary for quick context. The original article belongs to Robot Report.
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