Middle School Humanoid Robot Football Carnival Opens in Nanning with 3V3 Autonomous Play

The first Middle School Humanoid Robot Football Carnival opened in Nanning, Guangxi, on September 17. It is a supporting key sci-tech innovation event for the South A Community exhibition area of the 23rd China-ASEAN Expo.

The expo runs from September 17 to 21 in Nanning under the theme “Sharing 3.0 Opportunities, Creating a Better Life.” The South A Community exhibition area focuses on showcasing and exchanging developments in artificial intelligence.

Centered on humanoid robot football, the carnival also includes public science outreach, interactive performances, ASEAN exchange, and parent-child experiences. It is described as Guangxi's largest and highest-level middle school humanoid robot football event to date.

Competition uses a 3V3 fully autonomous AI football format with a unified fleet of Booster K1 humanoid robots. More than 40 contestants from ten Nanning middle schools competed. Fully autonomous means the robots do not rely on remote control; they must judge positions, decide actions, and coordinate with teammates on their own.

The 3V3 format is more complex than one-on-one play because it involves coordination among multiple robots. After one robot gains possession, it must decide where to move, when to pass, and how the other two should position themselves—all in real time. Using the same robot model controls variables at the algorithm and strategy level, so contestants compete on programming and tactical design.

Li Shihan, a student at the Yanqing Road campus of Wuxianghu Junior Middle School in Liangqing District, Nanning, said she became deeply interested in humanoid robot technology after encountering it in July. She said the event allows students to engage with frontier technology.

An official from Yilifang Technology (Nanning) Co., one of the organizers, said the event breaks down barriers between high-end technology and school campuses, bringing world-class sci-tech innovation into middle school classrooms. Leveraging the China-ASEAN Expo platform, the event also serves as a window to show Guangxi's youth sci-tech innovation education achievements to ASEAN and deepen sci-tech exchange.

Placing a middle school robot event in the expo venue aligns with AI as one of this year's key exhibition directions. Demand for robot education and industry is growing in ASEAN countries, and demonstrating Chinese youth sci-tech education capabilities through competition also represents an export of technology and education models.

With ten middle schools, more than 40 contestants, and Booster K1 robots, the event is not large by national middle school robotics standards. But it has blazed a path for bringing frontier technology into middle school classrooms. Students who only began working with humanoid robots in July could join a 3V3 fully autonomous competition two months later, suggesting the threshold for robotics education is falling. The next questions are whether the event model can continue after the expo and whether some participants will turn this experience into a first step toward embodied intelligence.