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Robot Olympics in China

What on earth is going on in China right now? 2,000 robots are competing in an Olympics, one of them ran faster than Usain Bolt – and next door other robots are brawling in a cage. I’ll explain what is happening in Beijing this week.

Beijing, National Speed Skating Oval. Second edition of the World Humanoid Robot Games – the robot Olympics. And the numbers have exploded: last year 280 teams with a good 500 robots competed in 26 disciplines. This year it is 666 teams with over 2,000 robots in 51 events – from sprinting to football to rescue operations.

Watch my complete video right here:

The sprint that breaks physics

The sensation first: the robot “Tiangong Ultra” ran the 100 meters in 8.86 seconds . Usain Bolt’s world record from 2009 stands at 9.58 seconds. A robot is thus officially faster than the fastest human in history – and it’s no one-day wonder: three days ago the best time was still 9.39 seconds, last year 21.5. More than 12 seconds faster in twelve months – a human couldn’t manage that in a hundred years. The landing was not elegant, though: after the finish line the sprinters went straight into the padded barrier instead of onto the grass.

Usain Bolt beim 100-Meter-Finale, Olympia Rio 2016 — Usain Bolt in the 100-meter final in Rio 2016. Photo: Fernando Frazão/Agência Brasil, license CC BY 3.0 BR, via Wikimedia Commons.

A tour of the disciplines

And the sprint is just one item of many. Football now runs completely autonomously, without any remote control. In tennis, manufacturer Galbot let a real human play a robot for the first time. Plus table tennis, high jump – and kickboxing. At the opening, 50 Tiangong robots also marched around the curve in perfectly synchronized formation. No marionettes on strings – every single one walks on its own.

Kickboxing – and next door the real robot fights

A quick bit of context on the kickboxing: it is THE thing in China right now anyway. In parallel with the Games, the World Robot Conference is running in Beijing – also this week, also with robots boxing each other. And in Shenzhen the “Ultimate Robot Knock-out Legend”tournament has started at the same time – real robot-versus-robot fights. Some reportedly keep fighting even when their head flies off mid-bout. The kickboxing at the Olympics is almost the harmless edge of the big China robot-fighting trend right now.

The colleague nobody asked for

And now the part that hit me personally as a camera operator: all the time, someone else is running along between the sprinters – a robot dog with a camera on it, jogging next to the athletes as a camera operator. And at one of the big studio cameras stands a humanoid robot operating the camera. The robot Olympics is partly filmed by robots. Congratulations, dear athletes – you’re being replaced. And I stand next to it thinking: let me know when it’s my turn.

A few fail moments already making the rounds

Until my own video is ready, here are a few clips that did the rounds this week around the Games:

A robot crashes into the judges’ table in the middle of the weightlifting final round:

The viral wall crash during sprint training, with plenty of sparks:

A robot that actually went up in flames during a sprint demo:

And for those who can’t get enough: a whole compilation of the biggest failures of the Games:

Conclusion

From 500 to 2,000 robots, from 21 seconds to 8.86 – that’s not a leisurely climb, that’s a leap. I’m curious where they’ll be in a year. Probably faster than I can keep up with the camera.

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