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The first ever World Humanoid Robot Games began on Friday with 280 teams from 16 countries descending upon China to compete. Video from some of the initial competitions and opening ceremony are both scary and satisfying, at least from your basic human being’s perspective.
The three-day long event will see over 500 humanoid robots participate and compete in sports like track and field, table tennis, soccer, kickboxing, and dance. They will also compete in other events, 26 in total, such as sorting medicines, handling materials, cleaning services, and traversing an obstacle course.
The first winner came with some chaos
The first gold medal of the event was awarded to a Unitree H1 humanoid robot for finishing the 1,500-meter race with a time of 6:34 on Friday. (The current Olympic record for the men’s 1500-meter race is 3:27.65, while the women’s record is 3:51.29.) During the event, one of the robot competitors suddenly collapsed while running at full speed, according to Reuters.
Also, according to the em>Guardian, another robot had to drop out of the 1500-meter “because its head flew off partway round the course.” Similar chaos occurred, according to Reuters , during a soccer match when “four robots crashed into each other and fell in a tangled heap.”
Rules for entry and cost of admission
Rules for entry, Mashable India reports, include the humanoid robots “be self-developed, purchased or leased by the participating teams,” “must have a trunk, upper limbs, and two feet,” and “have their own energy sources.”
Tickets for spectators at the World Humanoid Robot Games reportedly range from $18 to $80, which according to one fan, Hong Yun, a 58-year-old retired engineer, is well worth it because, as he told the Guardian, seeing the robots race was “much more exciting than seeing real humans.”
The World Humanoid Robot Games coincides with China opening a brand new over 43,000-square-foot, four-story Robot Mall, a full-scale shopping center that sells nothing but robots. A five-day World Robot Conference (WRC) was also held in Beijing from August 8th through the 12th.