When they’re not busy hanging bodies from bridges to forewarn rival cartel members, Mexicans are known to be easygoing, welcoming people. So welcoming in fact that they’ve hosted the 2012 World Robot Soccer championship last May.

The goal of the annual show, held this year in Mexico City, Mexico, beyond the obvious entertainment value at watching robots foul themselves, completely miss the ball, the net, or simply not moving for a full half (7 minutes), is to develop soccer playing robots that would be able to beat a human team. They’re aiming at 2050 to achieve this, but as you can see from the video above, that is a faraway goal for now except of course if they play against France.

And then there is the robot wars contest. Hopefully their goal is not to build a robot capable of beating up a human by 2050…

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