World humanoid robot games show runners breaking records, bursting into flames - Ars Technica

Endless runner

The fact that humanoid robots went from lagging behind human record-holders last year to surpassing human world records in the 100-meter sprint and standing high jump events this year suggests significant progress in robotic whole-body control for accomplishing specific tasks, Dipam Patel, a PhD candidate in computer science at Purdue University and a research assistant at the US Army DevCom Army Research Lab, told Ars.

“All of that does display whole body control, because you need to move all the joints, hands, legs, arm, body, everything to accomplish that task,” said Patel, who is also a graduate student member of IEEE. “So there has definitely been a huge push in engineering from where they were last time to this time.” Even the more autonomous robots competing in the World Humanoid Robot Competition still rely heavily on cloud computing to help run intensive AI models, rather than running the AI computing directly on their own onboard hardware, according to the South China Morning Post. It described robots being equipped with 5G modules to transmit data to an “embodied-intelligence system” and then receiving instructions on what to do next.

The real test for humanoid robots’ capabilities will necessarily take place in the real world beyond the demonstrations at the World Humanoid Robot Games. Investors have poured more than $6 billion into humanoid robot companies in 2025 alone, with Chinese companies being especially aggressive in testing and deploying such robots. Robots were also challenged by an unscheduled interruption when they had to bring a delivery package inside. That required them to switch tasks from the household chores to deal with receiving the delivery.

The Beijing Continental Grand Hotel provided robots with a different set of timed challenges, including moving wheeled luggage to assigned hotel rooms, cleaning up beds and restocking supplies. The Global Times also reported that a separate library shelving event challenged robots to collect book returns and put them in the correct place as a test of visual recognition and reasoning.