Five-day showcase reveals leaps Beijing has made in humanoid tech, but also its limitations as US rivals come up from the rear
With exploding pelvises, enough comic pratfalls for a Buster Keaton show reel and the odd moment of ruthless violence, the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing gripped the world this week with an unsettling mixture of hilarity, trepidation and relief.
The five-day showcase staked out China’s claim to undisputed leadership in humanoid robotics as android martial artists landed knockout roundhouse kicks and robot teams marched into the arena heralded by flag-waving captains astride giant robotic dogs. The games’ blue-riband event, the 100m, did not disappoint when the robot-sprinters ran quicker than Usain Bolt before slamming mindlessly into a padded wall in a blaze of sparks, flames and flying mechanical limbs.
There, in a 10-second clip perfect for the games’ global online audience, was proof of what onlooking international experts described as the superpower’s “staggering” engineering progress, combined with comfort that the disintegrating robots might not yet be ready to become humanity’s overlords.
“Ready for another big day of fail,” read a typically schadenfreude-laced comment from one of millions who tuned into viral social media clips and livestreams of events from boxing to breakdancing in which the humanoids displayed a jerky mix of ruthless effectiveness and pathetic failure.
Others caught themselves experiencing unexpected empathy. One captioned a robot struggling through the 400m obstacle race: “after drinking 4 bottles of wine at 2 a.m”. Another found a weightlifting contest “way more emotional than I expected” as the bots strained to achieve their sporting goals.
If the games had a slogan it might be: faster, higher, funnier. The obstacle course involving humanoids scrambling under nets, down stairs and over stepping stones reminded the comedian Charlie Higson of Monty Python’s Upper Class Twit of the Year sketch: “It’s only lacking ‘taking the bra off the debs’ and ‘shooting themselves’.” He came back the next day for more. “They get better and better,” he tweeted as a cheerleader robot wielding glittery pom-poms flailed around like it was having a fit.
But the games were not intended to only entertain. Involving over 2,000 humanoids built by more than 660 mostly domestic tech companies, it was a propaganda flex of China’s robotics muscle just weeks before its president, Xi Jinping, lands in Washington DC for a summit with Donald Trump, where the superpowers’ race to tech supremacy will be high on the agenda. Only last month Trump banned imports of Chinese humanoids and four-legged robot dogs, citing cyber and national security concerns. The event was also a billboard to boost global sales of Chinese robots as US rivals prepare their own launches, notably Elon Musk’s long-hyped Optimus humanoid which is reported to have finally gone into production this month. Last year China produced 12,800 humanoids, about 90% of the global total, according to the Mercator Institute for Chinese Studies, a dominance which perhaps gave China the confidence to candidly broadcast so many comic failures, which surprised some onlookers.
The event reflected the fact that, for the Chinese Communist party, humanoids are a high priority, offering solutions to a looming demographic crunch in the labour market, rising military ambitions and, as they walk more widely among the people, the state’s desire to tighten its surveillance web. Beijing is fuelling an intensely competitive robot industry by seeding hundreds of companies to create an evolutionary survival of the fittest dynamic, with the games creating a hard deadline for competitors to deliver measurable progress. Xi’s latest five-year plan, approved in March, was studded with pledges to boost robotics industries; accelerate the “practical application of … humanoid robots” and explore “embodied AI in roles experiencing labour shortages or high-risk environments” which likely include war. The military potential of the humanoids on display worried some onlookers.
“Fascinating, and honestly, a little scary,” said Arun Bothra, a senior police officer in India, which shares a tense border with China. “Watching robots run, play football and compete like humans is one thing. Seeing them on borders someday, carrying guns and making decisions, will be something else entirely.” Or as another viewer concluded while watching a humanoid hoist a loaded barbell in the weightlifting contest: “Humanity is preparing its own end”.
Of course China is not alone in pursuing robotic warfare. As the Beijing games progressed on Monday, Ukraine was staging a novel military parade in Kyiv made up entirely of robotic weaponry and defence equipment.
But how to explain the numerous crashes and fits in the Olympic speed skating arena where the competition took place? Experts said the games revealed how China was making the most rapid strides in developing humanoids’ bodies rather than their minds.
“The progress they have made from last year is staggering,” said Thrishantha Nanayakkara, a professor of robotics at the Dyson school of design engineering at Imperial College London. “Everything seems to be coming together …. by 2030, it will be a very different world.”
The fastest sprinter, Tiangong Ultra, completed the 100m more than twice as fast as last year, while the peak standing jump rose from 0.96 m to 3.40m. Liquid cooling has allowed Chinese engineers to increase the torque of the motors that drive their limbs creating more twitchy and powerful force.
“This execution is incredible,” said Ingo Keller, head of robotics at the National Robotarium, based at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. “You would not have expected the speed of development. [But] does it move the goalpost in utilising humanoids? Not necessarily.”
