These Robots Are Getting Ready For Their Own World Cup

As Brazil and Germany get ready to start off the FIFA World Cup Semifinals, a bunch of robots are prepping themselves for their own World Cup, the 2014 RoboCup.

Around 4,000 engineers and scientists from about 45 countries will be participating in this year's RoboCup. The games will kick off in João Pessoa, Brazil, on July 19.

Over the six-day competition, independent and remote-free robots will play soccer, obeying the same rules of an actual soccer game. A human judge along with a robot judge will oversee the games to make sure there is no foul play.

The first RoboCup was held in Nagoya, Japan, in 1997, and it has been going strong ever since. Every year top researchers gather to see how far Artificial Intelligence has come, and when there is a World Cup happening, they try to meet in the same location.

Unlike their FIFA counterparts, these soccer players don't really get first-class travel treatment.

That may be largely because these soccer players start from 3-D printers.

And are developed by scientists like Martin Raak of Igus GmbH.

The robots come in all shapes and sizes.

And they're all competing for the grand prize, the Louis Vuitton Cup.