Robot games in Beijing show record sprints and real limits

In short: Videos from Beijing’s World Humanoid Robot Games show robots breaking some track records, but also crashing, falling, and struggling with everyday chores.

What's going on

The second World Humanoid Robot Games ran in Beijing from August 22 to 26. Humanoid robots, meaning robots shaped like people with arms and legs, competed in events like sprinting, high jump, kung fu and dance, kickboxing, soccer, and table tennis.

Some viral clips show sprinting robots beating the human 100-meter record. Other clips show a key problem, the robots often could not slow down. Several ran into barriers, fell, and in a few cases broke at the waist with sparks or caught fire.

Experts told Ars Technica this progress is real, but it is narrow. Many of these robots are built to do one job very well, like a toaster that is great at toast but useless for cooking dinner. That shows up in races where robots run straight and keep going after the finish line.

Organizers also added more practical events, like washing and hanging laundry, folding clothes, cleaning rooms, moving luggage in a hotel, shelving returned books in a library, and even a firefighting and rescue test. In that outdoor test, only three out of 12 teams finished the full set of tasks.

What to watch

A big question is how independent these robots really are. Some events allowed teleoperation, meaning a person controlled the robot remotely like a very advanced remote control car, but teams lost points for it. Future tests that repeat the same task many times could better show reliability, not just a single impressive run.

Source: Arstechnica