幸福账单

Can humanoid robots move beyond the games?_我的网站

时事辩论会

A |

A Tien Kung robot (left) competes in the 400-meter race at the National Speed Skating Oval in Beijing on August 23, 2026 during the 2nd World Humanoid Robot Games (WHRG). Photo: VCG

On the blue track inside the National Speed Skating Oval, robots chased each other in the 400-meter race. A sprinting Tien Kung robot was tripped by a rival robot lying on the track but did not fall. Instead, it adjusted its posture in seconds and continued toward the finish line with a result of 38.15 seconds, breaking human 400-meter race world record of 43.03 seconds, held by South African athlete Wayde van Niekerk.
This scene unfolded on Sunday, the first official competition day of the 2nd World Humanoid Robot Games (WHRG). Later that evening, a humanoid robot named Lightning, developed by Honor Co., broke the long-standing human 1,500-meter world record of 3:26 set by Moroccan athlete Hicham El Guerrouj with a time of 2:30.22. Just one night earlier, during the opening ceremony's 100-meter sprint and high jump demonstrations, humanoid robots had already shattered records long held by human athletes Usain Bolt and Javier Sotomayor — merely an appetizer for the five-day sci-fi spectacle.
The Games have attracted 666 teams from 16 countries across six continents, up 138 percent from its inaugural edition. The number of participating robots quadrupled to 2,056, the Global Times learned from the organizing committee.
Yet the biggest change this year was not only the scale, but also the technological maturity. More teams have shifted from remote-controlled robots to fully autonomous systems. Chinese observers, after watching several events, said humanoid robots are no longer limited to simple demonstrations of walking or dancing. Increasingly, they are being tested in environments that demand speed, coordination, perception and decision-making.
From movement to intelligence

Behind the record-breaking performances are a series of technological upgrades. During the running events, Global Times reporters observed that robots were able to make subtle movements around their hip joints while walking, allowing them to maintain balance and produce movements closer to human biomechanics.
Guo Yijie, technical director of Tien Kung Ultra, said the improvement came from advances in hardware design.
"Robot joints have improved in torque and speed. As competitions demand higher power output, the reliability of the main control board, power board and high-power battery discharge capability have become increasingly important," Guo told the Global Times.
According to Guo, the same Tien Kung Ultra robot was used in both sprinting and jumping events. For running, the waist needs rotation to balance the inertia generated by leg movements. For jumping, the upper body requires pitching movement to help the robot achieve greater distance or height, Guo said, noting that these can all be achieved with only slight adjustments to the waist configuration were needed, and it highly demonstrated to the robot design's flexibility.
Besides the hardware upgrades, developments in robots' faster decision-making in "brains' is better showcased in football competitions.
The Booster T2 robot used by many domestic and overseas football teams has increased its onboard computing capability by 10 times compared with the previous generation. The time from recognizing the goal to deciding whether to pass or shoot has been reduced to around 100 milliseconds - faster than the time humans usually need to blink.
Cheng Hao, a technical representative from Boosters Robotics, said the improvement represents an "end-to-end" transformation in embodied intelligence.
"In the past, robots relied on separate steps: perception, planning, decision-making and execution. Each stage was disconnected. Now, with an end-to-end motion foundation model, visual input can directly generate joint control commands," Cheng said.
The newly introduced table tennis and tennis competitions are also testing another important capability: perception.
"Robots are moving from simply recognizing the three-dimensional position of a ball to understanding the movement information of opponents and more complex environments," said Li Yinghui, a postdoc researcher and the leader from the Hong Kong University team at the table tennis event. Such capabilities developed in sports scenarios could eventually be transferred to other scenarios in industries or daily life, Li said.
Beyond entertainment
Though clips from the robot competitions have made a buzz on social media, with some critics from Western media questioning why robots need to dance, play football or compete in athletics while arguing that these activities appear far from everyday needs.
Zhou Changjiu, Vice President of the RoboCup Federation and the Robotics Competition Association of the Asia-Pacific (RCAP), stressed robot sports are not designed for entertainment alone. "Robot competitions are testing the capabilities needed for humanoid robots to enter the real world," Zhou told the Global Times.
Different events evaluate different abilities. Sprinting tests speed, marathons examine battery endurance and energy management, while football provides a comprehensive test because of its dynamic and unpredictable nature, testing intelligence, manipulation, interaction, safety, cost and trust at the same time, Zhou said.
Unlike a single-task demonstration, football requires robots to cooperate. Players must understand their own roles, recognize teammates and opponents, and make collective decisions - a form of swarm intelligence that could become essential when robots work together in homes, factories and emergency rescue environments.
Entertainment, however, can generate business opportunities. Gu Jinghai, brand director of EYOU Robot Co, told the Global Times that the company sold 95,000 integrated joints in China in 2025 and expects sales to exceed 1 million units in 2026. Growth mainly comes from planetary joints used in entertainment robots, while harmonic joints for industrial robots are also expanding steadily, he said.
Jiao Jichao, an executive from UBTECH Robotics, said the criticism that "Chinese robots can only sing and dance" reflects only a temporary stage of development. "Performance and dancing are also real commercial demands, and their existence has value," Jiao said. "Beyond entertainment, Chinese robots are already demonstrating intelligent capabilities that support practical applications in manufacturing, and partnerships with companies including Huawei and Foxconn, where robots have already entered production lines in small-scale applications."
The Outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development of China stated that the country will construct a comprehensive cultivation system for future industries including the embody intelligence as new economic growth drivers.
Zhou said the development of humanoid robots is not only about individual machines, but about building an entire ecosystem.
China's advantage lies in its complete supply chain, abundant application scenarios and manufacturing capabilities, while the fast growing industry still faces challenges such as the lack of unified standards.
Gu said the company has launched mass production of robotics joint under domestic standard of auto parts.
Robot competitions can help address these issues by creating common standards in areas such as competition rules, robot dimensions, communication systems, batteries and joint modules. "As applications expand, the cost of key robot components will continue to decline," Zhou said.
"Numbers are magic," Zhou said. "If producing one robot costs a huge amount because it is handmade, producing one million robots will completely change the cost structure."
For humanoid robots, the race taking place inside the Ice Ribbon may not ultimately be about who crosses the finish line first. It may be about whether these machines can learn to navigate the far more complicated race outside the stadium - the race into the real world.
。

B | 9月20日，省统计局发布今年1月至8月经济运行情况。数据显示，前8个月，我省规上工业、固定资产投资、市场销售、出口等经济指标均呈现增长态势，全省经济运行总体保持平稳。　　前8个月，全省规模以上工业增加值同比增长2.8%，比1月至7月提高0.5个百分点。其中，高技术制造业增加值增长13.5%。　　分三大门类看，采矿业、制造业增加值分别增长6.5%、2.2%，电力、热力、燃气及水生产和供应业增长3.8%。分经济类型看，国有控股企业、集体企业、股份制企业增加值分别增长0.4%、9.6%、4.0%，私营企业增长3.8%。

C | 　　分行业看，在全省40个工业大类行业中，有29个行业增加值同比增长，增长面为72.5%。

D | 从主要新产品看，新能源汽车产量增长13.4%，集成电路产量增长8.0%，工业机器人产量增长5.9%。　　前8个月，固定资产投资同比增长3.4%。

E | 其中，中央项目投资增长22.0%，比1至7月份加快2.0个百分点，支撑有力。分领域看，基础设施、制造业投资分别增长12.5%和5.2%。分产业看，第一产业投资同比下降5.3%，第二产业投资增长10.7%，第三产业投资下降0.9%。高技术制造业投资中，航空、航天器及设备制造业投资增长1.7倍，医药制造业投资增长15.3%。建设项目投资增长10.2%。其中，亿元以上建设项目投资增长14.7%。　　市场销售持续增长，前8个月，全省社会消费品零售总额6913.4亿元，同比增长4.1%。