Dramatic falls and low-quality soccer: here’s what stood out at the Robot Olympics

Robot wars just got a makeover. Over the past weekend, Beijing played host to an unusual kind of sporting spectacle: the inaugural World Humanoid Robot Games, a three-day competition featuring 280 teams from 16 countries in order to see just how long it will take for the robots to take over.

Held at the National Speed Skating Oval, the same 12,000-seat arena from the 2022 Winter Olympics, the event saw 500 humanoid robots go head-to-head across disciplines like football, track and field, table tennis, boxing, and even tasks such as sorting medicines, cleaning, and material handling.

However, as amazing as it was to see the latest advances in human technology, there were plenty of literal slip-ups: one anxious bot cartwheeled right into its human operator, while others stumbled (or even decapitated themselves) before the finish line.

In football, small robots roughly the size of seven-year-olds waddled around, kicking each other like a blind Irish dancing team, and just about managing to score a few goals.

But the chaotic hilarity wasn’t without purpose. Backed by the Beijing city government, organisers view this event as a high-stakes testing ground for robotics, particularly useful for refining AI perception, coordination, and decision-making in real-world scenarios like factory automation or elder care.

Financial muscle is behind this too: over $20 billion in subsidies has already been deployed, and a massive 1 trillion yuan (around $137 billion) fund is in the works to support further growth in robotics and AI startups.

And some teams are enjoying measurable successes. For instance, Unitree’s humanoid runners dominated the 1,500-metre race, clocking in at just 6 minutes and 29 seconds, which, while nowhere near a human’s best of around 3:26, still signals real progress on the robotic runway.

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