Galbot & Unitree Win Gold at World Humanoid Robot Games
The inaugural World Humanoid Robot Games, a landmark event showcasing the rapid advancements in robotics, concluded recently in Beijing, with Chinese powerhouses Galbot and Unitree Robotics claiming multiple gold medals and underscoring the accelerating progress in autonomous humanoid technology. Held from August 14 to 17 at the National Speed Skating Oval, the venue of the 2022 Winter Olympics, the games brought together 280 teams from 16 countries, competing with over 500 androids across 26 diverse events.
The competition, often dubbed China’s “Robot Olympics,” featured a wide array of challenges, from traditional athletic feats like the 100-meter hurdles, 400-meter, and 1,500-meter races, to practical, real-world scenarios such as medicine categorization, cleaning tasks, and factory material handling. A significant emphasis was placed on autonomous capabilities, with some events, notably the 5-on-5 football matches, requiring robots to make entirely AI-driven decisions without human intervention. This marked a clear step forward from previous competitions, though some events, like boxing, still relied on remote operation.
Beijing-based Galbot distinguished itself by securing first place in the demanding Robot Skills Challenge. The company, founded in May 2023, has rapidly emerged as a key player in embodied artificial general intelligence (AGI), focusing on developing humanoid robots for both commercial and home service applications. Their flagship robot, the Galbot G1, a semi-humanoid mobile manipulator equipped with wheels and dual arms, demonstrated its prowess in complex tasks such as object grasping, boasting an impressive 95-97% success rate across diverse materials. Galbot’s innovative “Sim2Real” methodology, which leverages vast synthetic datasets for pre-training and minimal real-world data for fine-tuning, is proving crucial in overcoming the high costs associated with traditional data collection, accelerating their robots’ deployment into practical scenarios. The company’s humanoid robots are already autonomously operating in over 10 pharmacies in Beijing, handling tasks like retrieving medicines and delivering orders, with plans to expand to 100 locations nationwide by year-end. Galbot is also forging partnerships, including a joint venture with a Bosch unit, to bring its embodied AI solutions to high-precision manufacturing environments within the next two years.
Meanwhile, Unitree Robotics, a Hangzhou-based firm, showcased its athletic dominance by clinching multiple gold medals in running events, including the 1,500 meters, 400 meters, 4x100 meters relay, and 100-meter hurdles. Their H1 humanoid robot, a model previously featured at the 2025 Chinese Spring Festival Gala, particularly impressed in the 1,500-meter race, clocking in at 6 minutes and 34 seconds and notably outpacing rivals, including a robot from Tesla. Unitree’s success highlights China’s strategic shift from a robotics importer to a formidable innovator, increasingly challenging established global leaders.
The World Humanoid Robot Games served as a powerful testament to China’s ambitious drive to lead the global robotics industry, with the government explicitly placing humanoids at the “centre of their national strategy.” While the event underscored remarkable progress in robot movement, intelligent decision-making, and real-world applicability, it also candidly revealed the current limitations of these advanced machines. Robots occasionally struggled with balance and coordination, experiencing tumbles and collisions, with one even losing its head during a 1,500-meter race. Despite these moments, which underscore the significant development still required, the games offered a compelling glimpse into a future where humanoid robots could seamlessly integrate into various aspects of human life, from assisting in healthcare and eldercare to revolutionizing industrial automation and daily services.