Skild AI Trains Soccer Robot via 140 Years of Simulated Self-Play, No Human Demos

deepakpathak · x · 2026-09-24

Skild AI's "Messinator" learned to dribble past defenders, shield the ball and tackle purely through self-play — 140+ years of simulated soccer with only goals rewarded — before transferring to a real humanoid. Ilya Lehmann notes self-play is the same trick behind AlphaGo, but far harder with bodies: a humanoid must set every joint angle 50 times a second, making the move space effectively infinite. Still, he argues this is likely the path to superhuman robots.

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