The second World Humanoid Robot Games open at Beijing’s National Speed Skating Oval on 22 August and run to the 26th. There are 2,056 robots entered from 666 teams across 16 countries, competing in 1,301 individual matches over five days. Entries are up 311% on last year’s edition and team numbers up 138%.
The programme splits in two. The competitive half runs 26 events across nine disciplines, including athletics, football, gymnastics, weightlifting, martial arts, tug of war and pitch-pot. The other half is six scenario-based contests set in homes, hotels, industrial sites, emergency response, hospitals and retail. That second category is the one worth watching, because it scores machines on completing a job rather than performing a trick.
The Games follow the World Robot Conference, running 19 to 23 August in Beijing’s E-Town with more than 300 exhibiting companies. Forbes described the pair of events as a market map, which is about right. Chinese investors have put more than 100 billion yuan, roughly $14.8 billion, into the sector this year, and an event that ranks 2,000 machines against defined tasks functions as a procurement catalogue with an audience.
The counterweight arrived on the conference’s opening day, where several humanoids failed in front of the crowd, one ending up twisted on its back and another toppling into a cushion mid-demonstration. Both things are true at once: the category is scaling fast enough to need a scoring system, and the machines still fall over on stage. The scenario events will be the honest measure of which is winning, because a hotel corridor does not care how well anything dances.
