A weightlifting robot collapsed onto a judges' table during the World Humanoid Robot Games (WHRG) in Beijing on Monday, before being carried away on a stretcher by event staff.
The black and white bot, one of hundreds of machines competing at the event, was attempting to lift a weight above its head during the weightlifting final when it began to shake, dropped the weight to the floor, and then malfunctioned. It stumbled toward a table of judges and collapsed head first on top of it.
A group of staff wearing red vests quickly attended to the robot, piling it onto a stretcher and carefully escorting it from the main floor. Officials immediately halted the competition and declared the attempt over.
A dramatic second day of competition
The fall was just one of several dramatic moments at the games, which are held at the Beijing National Speed Skating Oval and also feature boxing, high jump, tai chi and table tennis. The event began on Sunday and runs for five days.
Earlier at the same competition, a robot ran 100 metres in 9.39 seconds, surpassing the world record of 9.58 seconds set by Jamaican sprinting great Usain Bolt. Elsewhere, another robot performed footballer Cristiano Ronaldo's 'Siuuu' celebration on the pitch, while a group of droids took part in a synchronised march during the opening ceremony.
More than 2,000 robots are estimated to have gathered for the event's opening day. While 96 per cent of the teams entering the games are Chinese, 16 countries from six continents are taking part in the 1,301 matches scheduled across the competition.
How the games are scored
The games combine competitions modelled on human sports with task-based events, some of which require fully autonomous robots. Independent robots receive full points, while semi-autonomous bots are awarded only half points.
Of the 50 events scheduled, 30 are sports competitions and the remaining 20 are work scenario tasks. The sporting events include weightlifting, gymnastics, football and tug of war, alongside 11 Olympic-style track and field events. The 20 work-based tasks involve dexterous hand challenges such as bricklaying, power tool assembly and package handling, understood to give a preview of where humanoid robots will first be used commercially.
No events at this year's games involve stairs, ladders, uneven terrain or human-robot collaboration.
Chinese-built 'Superman' outpaces Bolt
The games follow other recent record-breaking runs by Chinese-built robots. Scientists in China have developed a separate prototype, nicknamed "Superman", which they say can outrun Bolt. It reached speeds of 12.66 metres per second (28.3mph) on a track, faster than the 12.42 metres per second (27.78mph) Bolt hit when he set his world record at the World Athletics Championships in 2009.
The same robot also jumped an estimated two metres vertically from a standing position, beating the human standing jump world record of 1.7 metres (5ft 7in) set by American Christopher Spell in 2021.
The robot was built by Unitree, a Hangzhou-based Chinese robotics company known for its high-performance robot dogs and humanoid robots.
Earlier half-marathon mishap
Robot competitions in China have produced other mishaps besides Monday's fall. During a training session on April 19 for Beijing's humanoid half-marathon, a robot fell head first over the starting line and smashed to pieces, leaving only its legs twitching on the ground before five paramedics carried the remains away.
That incident happened during a rehearsal held between April 11 and 12 in Beijing's E-Town Economic and Technological Development Area, designed to simulate every aspect of the real race. More than 70 teams took part in the practice round, which tested navigation, timing, equipment, coordination and emergency response.
Robotics as a national priority
China's advances in automation and robotics have increasingly turned into an area of international competition, raising national security concerns abroad. Beijing's latest five-year plan for 2026 to 2030 pledges to "target the frontiers of science and technology," including speeding up development of products such as humanoid robots.
A recent report by Omdia, a London-based technology research and advisory group, ranked three Chinese companies, AGIBOT, Unitree Robotics and UBTech Robotics Corp, as the only first-tier vendors worldwide for shipment numbers of general-purpose embodied intelligent robots. Each company shipped more than 1,000 units last year, with AGIBOT and Unitree each shipping more than 5,000 units, according to the report.
