Would You Cheer for a Robot?

November 25, 2025

When we think of robots, we tend to think of machines performing routine, repetitive work. Robots, however, also have entertainment potential, like when they play soccer in the RoboCup.

As a roboticist in the field of human-robot interaction, the interaction between a crowd of humans and a team of robots playing soccer poses interesting questions: What if robots could energize a crowd, spark emotional reactions and bring people together like athletes on a field?

Those questions sit at the core of a new idea for understanding how humanoid robots engage with human audiences in dynamic, public settings: the Robot-Crowd Interaction Framework or R-CIF.

But this is about more than robot soccer. As robots move beyond the lab into stadiums, hospitals and public venues, designing for emotional connection and collective experience becomes as vital as mechanical precision.

Beyond Measuring the Machine Itself

If you want to see how robots affect crowd behavior, watch a match from the RoboCup Soccer Standard Platform League. It’s a robot soccer match where all of the teams compete using the same robot model. You’ll see humanoid robots competing and responding to a complex environment and executing autonomous strategies.

But beyond the engineering marvel is the emotional involvement of the audience. It is fascinating. People cheer. They take sides. They experience disappointment.

The robots evoke something profoundly human. It’s not just about robots playing soccer.

As a conceptual framework that defines the roles and dynamics between robots, referees and spectators, R-CIF unpacks this phenomenon.

Identify emotional triggers in robot behavior that drive public engagement
Map patterns of crowd response in competitive or high-stakes environments
Bridge the gap between technical robot design and human social experience

Robotics research has already developed several tools to evaluate the performance of robots. RoboCup robots can be evaluated using established tools such as the Autonomy Levels for Unmanned Systems (ALFUS). It focuses on mission complexity, environmental complexity and external system independence. The Autonomy and Technology Readiness Assessment (ATRA) tracks the growth of robot capabilities over time.

But the most exciting contribution is connecting these assessments to real-world crowd interactions. It’s a new way of evaluating robots.

Why This Matters: A New Era of Social Robots

Recently, my co-authors and I presented the interaction framework at the 20th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI’25) in Melbourne. Instead of opening our presentation with a series of slides that listed our credentials, we demonstrated R-CIF in action.

We opened with a video of a RoboCup match. It transformed the room. Within seconds, people were cheering for their team, red or blue, and reacting to goals as if they were watching a real football match.

The response was overwhelming,

But all of this raises the question. Why does this matter?

There’s an evolution in the field of robotics. Human-robot interaction has evolved to add new specialties, like human-robot collaboration and human-robot teaming, where robots are not just tools or collaborators, but teammates. As robots move out of confined labs and into human‑centred environments, from concerts and classrooms to airports and arenas, designing for performance alone is no longer enough. We must also design for presence, inclusion and shared experience. The R‑CIF offers a pathway to understand and engineer those key moments when robots become part of a crowd, not just acting among people, but acting with them, as teammates in a shared emotional and social space.

As robotics continues to evolve, frameworks like R-CIF will help guide development toward systems that are not only functional but also socially fluent. The game is changing and the crowd is watching.

ABOUT OUR AUTHOR

Filippo Sanfilippo is an IEEE Senior Member whose work focuses on robotics and machine learning. He is a member of the IEEE Public Visibility Committee and a former chair of IEEE Norway Section.