RoboCup Soccer Autonomy Uprising: How Crowds, Referees, and Humanoid Robots Are Redefining the Future of Human-Robot Interaction

This paper explores the dynamics of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) in public spaces, focusing on how humanoid robots engage with human crowds in the competitive RoboCup Soccer environment. We examine the role of spectatorship, where emotional engagement arises through indirect observation of engineering-driven competition, drawing parallels between human soccer and robot sports. The potential for autonomous systems to elicit collective emotions and systematically study such experiences is investigated. Using the Autonomy Levels for Unmanned Systems (ALFUS) framework, we assess RoboCup soccer robots' autonomy in terms of mission complexity (MC), environmental complexity (EC), and external system independence (ESI). Additionally, the Autonomy and Technology Readiness Assessment (ATRA) method supports gradual capability enhancement, providing a roadmap to higher autonomy. Based on this established methodology, we introduce the Robot-Crowd Interaction Framework (R-CIF), a novel conceptual framework defining the roles of actors involved, to connect theoretical insights with real-world applications. This work highlights the significance of crowd affectivity in robotic sports to boost public engagement and proposes directions for future research on collective emotional dynamics in HRI.