The first humanoid robot football tournament for Beijing middle school students kicked off on Saturday, using embodied AI competitions as a new platform to foster young people's innovation skills and technological literacy.
The tournament began on Saturday morning with a 3-on-3 exhibition match, in which robots wearing yellow and blue jerseys dribbled, passed, and shot with coordinated movements. At one point, a defender from the yellow team successfully scored, drawing cheers from the audience.
Behind the robots' moves were student programmers who fine-tuned codes to enhance the machines' visual recognition and motion control. The tournament, running through July, will bring together teams from both Beijing and Xiong'an New Area in the neighboring Hebei Province, encouraging students to engage in AI practices through coding, hardware debugging and tactical collaboration.
The event also establishes a collaborative mechanism integrating schools, universities, research institutes and tech enterprises, aiming to turn cutting-edge technologies into accessible educational experiences. The initiative is part of broader efforts to advance AI education in primary and secondary schools and promote balanced development of "AI plus" education across the Beijing-Xiong'an region.
Beijing launches 1st humanoid robot soccer tournament for middle school students
Israel's influence on the Trump administration outsizes the already significant sway it held over previous presidencies, contributing to miscalculations that ultimately led to strikes on Iran and putting the temporary ceasefire at risk, said a U.S. expert.
After about 40 days of deadly clashes, the United States and Iran reached a two-week ceasefire on Wednesday, with Israel supporting the truce. However, the truce remains deeply fragile, especially as Israel continues to attack Lebanon, which Iran has called a violation of the ceasefire and threatened a strong response if it continues.
However, the power of the Israel lobby in the United States, especially over the Trump Administration, may weaken its ability to rein in Israeli military action, said Anton Fedyashin, an associate professor at American University.
"The Trump administration has no one but itself to blame. Although it is acting in a very important context, which is the general, enormous influence of the Israeli government over all American administrations, except that under Trump, this influence of course is greater than ever before. Israel has a very powerful lobby in the United States. This is absolutely no secret; not only articles, but very good books have been written about this," he said in an interview with China Global Television Network.
Fedyashin said this influence, combined with poor intelligence, contributed to what he described as a misjudgment that Iran's government would easily fall.
"The problem is that while previous presidents have managed to somehow resist that lobby, Donald Trump seems to have completely fallen for Benjamin Netanyahu's case to convince him that the attack on Iran will be lightning fast, will achieve results very quickly. And this becomes a very important question about the quality of Mossad information, because along with Benjamin Netanyahu in the White House meeting, which happened on February 11, at least according to New York Times, was the head of the Israeli Mossad, and both Netanyahu and the head of Mossad were convincing Trump that Iran's government is on its last legs, that all it needs is a slight push, and that was a catastrophic misjudgment," he said.
US influence over Israel limited as attacks on Lebanon threaten to shatter ceasefire: expert
