SINGAPORE (CNN) -- The players might never be mistaken for Diego Maradona or Zinedine Zidane, but the soccer stars taking the field in Singapore Friday were nonetheless part of an attempted revolution in the world's most popular sport.

At the RoboCup challenge, teams of small soccer-playing robots squared off against each other in games that featured not a single human being -- with moves that can charitably be described as uncoordinated.

But this novel demonstration of football has a much more ambitious purpose.

Dr. Hiroaki Kitano, a senior researcher at Sony Computer Science Laboratory and the father of the RoboCup, says the goal is to eventually build a team of human-sized robots that can take on the human World Cup champions under the sport's official regulations.

"This is really an ultimate goal, and this is really difficult to do," says Kitano. "It takes probably at least a good 50 years."

The robots can see, think and decide what to do. They operate using a visual system with which they recognize and respond to certain colors -- the ball is orange, the goal is blue. Scientists working on the project say one of the obstacles to overcome will be getting the roboplayers to recognize shapes.

Reuters contributed to this report.