Robots just wrapped up a game of soccer in Iran. There were cute, smiling humanoid robots, blocky erector set robots, and robots that looked they waltzed out of a Japanese anime film. There were robots from the Netherlands, from China, and from the United States. And they were all there, in a giant auditorium in Tehran, to try to score goals against all the other foreign robots. The Iran Open is a preliminary event for the world famous 2013 RoboCup competition, which will culminate in Europe later this year. And Iran has been heavily involved since the late 90s.

The first RoboCup, short for Robot Soccer World Cup, kicked off in 1997 in the Netherlands, and it has been held annually ever since. The goal each nation is simple in concept: build a robot soccer team that could defeat a human one by 2050. Or, according to the official charter:"By mid-21st century, a team of fully autonomous humanoid robot soccer players shall win the soccer game, complying with the official rule of the FIFA, against the winner of the most recent World Cup.

"That is, to put it mildly, ambitious. Not-so-coincidentally, it should be noted, the nations that have tended to do best—the U.S., Iran, China—have low-ranking human soccer teams. There are four different divisions—different sizes and levels of complexity; there used to be a four-legged robot, for example—including a simulation division. There are also non-sport related events, like RoboRescue bots. But mainly, for over 15 years, robot soccer players have gathered to clumsily kick balls through goal posts while other robots look on. And let's just say we're still a ways off from the age of robo-soccer champs. It's certainly totally impressive that, as you can see in the video above, robots can walk up to a ball autonomously and kick it through a goal—while avoiding a defender, too.