On the outskirts of Beijing, young Chinese entrepreneur Cheng Hao sits on an indoor soccer pitch – but this turf isn’t for humans. It’s where engineers working for his start-up, Booster Robotics, train human-like robots to play soccer using artificial intelligence – dribbling, passing, shooting and blocking.
Cheng, a 37-year-old Beijinger, is at the vanguard of China’s decade-long push into humanoid robot technology.
He founded the company in 2023, inspired by the release of Tesla’s first humanoid Optimus and the then-groundbreaking ChatGPT-4, and wants to develop the world’s most advanced soccer-playing humanoids.
“There are hundreds of robot soccer teams in the…
