Robots fitted with AI developed by Google’s DeepMind have figured out how to play football. The miniature humanoid robots, which are about knee height, were able to make tackles, score goals and easily recover from falls when tripped. In order to learn how to play, AI researchers first used DeepMind’s state-of-the-art MuJoCo physics engine to train virtual versions of the robots in decades of match simulations. The simulated robots were rewarded if their movements led to improved performance, such as winning the ball from an opponent or scoring a goal. Once they were sufficiently capable of performing the basic skills, DeepMind researchers then transferred the AI into real-life versions of the bipedal bots, who were able to play one-on-one games of football against each other with no additional training required. “The trained soccer players exhibit robust and dynamic movement skills, such as rapid fall recovery, walking, turning, kicking and more,” DeepMind noted in a blog post. “The agents also developed a basic strategic understanding of the game, and learned, for instance, to anticipate ball movements and to block opponent shots. “Although the robots are inherently fragile, minor hardware modifications, together with basic regularisation of the behaviour during training led the robots to learn safe and effective movements while still performing in a dynamic and agile way.” A paper detailing the research, titled ‘Learning agile soccer skills for a bipedal robot with deep reinforcement learning’, is currently under peer-review. Previous DeepMind research on football-playing AI has used different team set ups, increasing the number of players in order to teach simulated humanoids how to work as a team. The researchers say the work will not only advance coordination between AI systems, but also offer new pathways towards building artificial general intelligence (AGI) that is of an equivalent or superiour level to humans. Read More 10 ways AI will change the world – from curing cancer to wiping out humanity DeepMind boss says human-level AI is just a few years away Apple finally launches two professional apps on the iPad UK-based tech company claims quantum computing ‘breakthrough’

Fousey gained widespread attention on August 23, during the 12th day of his Subathon

Ubisoft has announced that a September showcase will be revealing news and updates across mulitplay Ubisoft games.

Thomas Frank says Ivan Toney will stay at Brentford despite the England striker's eight-month ban...

Billy Sharp had his first career hat trick and Diego Fagundez scored the winner as the Los Angeles Galaxy rallied from a two-goal deficit to beat Minnesota United 4-3

Breaking down the FedEx Cup standings as we head into the second playoff event of the year, the BMW Championship at Olympia Fields.The FedEx Cup Playoffs got off to a wild start last week in Memphis as Lucas Glover fought off some big mistakes in the final round as the 54-hole leader to outduel ...

Locals are advised to stay home as record rainfall turns city streets into raging rivers.

Guatemala’s top electoral authority says that it has blocked the suspension of President-elect Bernardo Arévalo’s Seed Movement, at least temporarily giving the party back its legal status and cutting off an attempt by rials to weaken Arévalo

Will Saquon Barkley be able to play in the upcoming game against the San Francisco 49ers? Get the latest update on his ankle injury.

World champion Qin Haiyang swam the 10th fastest 50m breaststroke ever on Friday in the Asian Games heats, as Zhang Yufei set the 50m butterfly pace in her...

Richie Palacios homered, rookie Drew Rom and four relievers combined on a three-hitter and the St. Louis Cardinals beat Baltimore 1-0 to trim the Orioles’ lead in the AL East to two games

Best Amazon Prime Day robot vacuum deals Nearly any robot vacuum can sufficiently clear a