2015 RoboCup Soccer World Championships kick off

The annual RoboCup Soccer world championships are underway in China with teams from 45 countries competing in five leagues to claim a title.

There are leagues for small-, medium- and human-sized robots, as well as divisions for software coders equipped with the same hardware, and a division that runs football simulations with no hardware at all.

The tournament was first run in 1997 with the eventual goal of finding a robotic team capable of beating their human counterparts. That goal is still some way off.