Robot soccer, piloted from four continents

This week's community update was a little different. Instead of just Nils talking to the camera, we livestreamed what may be the world's first remote-teleoperated humanoid robot soccer match. Five robots on a small indoor pitch in Hong Kong, pilots logging in from Tampa Bay, Dubai, Miami, Manchester, and the room itself, and Nils piloting the Booster in the grey t-shirt as the referee.

It was glorious, buggy chaos. We loved it.

How it worked

The setup was simple:

• Five humanoid robots on a green-mat pitch with painted lines, two goals, and a soccer ball.
• Four remote pilots controlling robots over the internet from four different countries.
• One in-room pilot (Nils, as the referee).
• Three control schemes: WASD on a keyboard, an on-screen joystick, or an Xbox-style gamepad.

Pilots picked a robot number, joined a team (yellow or blue), and tried to push the ball into the other team's goal. Bumping into each other was allowed. Running off the field was not.

The teleop was done through CTRL+R's platform.

What we learned

The match itself was a stress test of every part of the remote-control pipeline at once: networking, video, controls, and the robots' own locomotion.

A few things stood out:

• Latency and packet loss were the biggest opponent on the field, not the other team. Several pilots had their robots freeze mid-stride. One robot got stuck running forward and wouldn't stop. Cameras dropped offline and had to be refreshed.
• Internet quality matters more than skill. The pilot in Manchester had no freezes. Others had several. Same software, very different experience.
• Collision detection isn't there yet. Robots got wedged in the goal net more than once. At one point two robots were stuck in the same net together.
• The control schemes work, but the joystick is rough. Pilots who switched to keyboard WASD reported a noticeably better experience. We're adding camera controls in the next push.
• Identifying your robot in a pile of identical robots is harder than you'd think. Big numbers on the jerseys are going on the wishlist.

Why we did it

Robot soccer is a stunt, but it's a stunt that exercises exactly the capability stack we care about. Remote teleoperation of humanoid robots, with multiple operators sharing a physical space, over the public internet, with non-trivial latency, is the same problem shape as a brand inspector remotely walking a retail aisle, or a surgeon supervising a procedure from another city, or a warehouse operator covering for a tired colleague.

The reason we keep coming back to teleop in these updates is that it's the bridge. Full autonomy isn't here yet. Direct human operation doesn't scale. Teleop, done well, is what lets one skilled operator be useful across many physical locations without flying anywhere.

Today's match showed us where the rough edges are. The next one will be smoother.

What's next

A few things we're already working on:

• Camera controls for pilots in the next release.
• Better visual identification of robots (big numbers, jerseys, sponsor logos — yes, we're taking offers).
• Improvements to handle stuck-state recovery so a frozen robot can be reset without ending the match.
• More live experiments. This format worked. We'll do more of it.

If you want to pilot a robot in the next one, jump into Discord and say hi. We'll be running these regularly.

Watch the whole update on X.

About Auki

Auki is making the physical world accessible to AI by building the real world web: a way for robots and digital devices like smart glasses and phones to browse, navigate, and search physical locations.

70% of the world economy is still tied to physical locations and labor, so making the physical world accessible to AI represents a 3X increase in the TAM of AI in general. Auki's goal is to become the decentralized nervous system of AI in the physical world, providing collaborative spatial reasoning for the next 100bn devices on Earth and beyond.

X | Discord | LinkedIn | YouTube | Whitepaper | auki.com