The first embodied intelligent robot sports meet was recently held in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, featuring over 150 robot "players" competing on the sports field, including round-trip racing, football matches, and robot fighting. The previous 2025 Beijing Yizhuang Half Marathon and Humanoid Robot Half Marathon have attracted widespread attention, and Beijing also plans to host the World Humanoid Robot Games this year. Why do robots gather in groups to engage in sports activities, from running half horses to sports events? Is it a mule or a horse, pulled out for a walk? ": Why do robots choose sports for testing? At the first embodied intelligent robot sports meeting, the 2V2 robot football match featured red and blue robots alternating offense and defense on a simulated green field, contributing famous scenes such as "heel goal" and "midfield shot"; In the shooting competition, the robot "Iron Dwen" lightly buckled its wrist and won all ten shots with full applause... "Sports competition provides complex and diverse real scenes, which means a test for robots from perception of the environment to information analysis, and then from real-time decision-making to motion control. This is exactly what robot development needs. ”In the view of Li Chenxi, a Ph.D. in computer science from Tsinghua University and a postdoctoral fellow in the Ministry of Sports, sports competition is an ideal experimental field for robot technology, and also an important step for robots to step out of the laboratory and move towards real production and life. International competitions have always been a testing ground for high-tech. From the timing system and high-speed cameras on the Olympic stage, to the "Eagle Eye" tennis and VAR (Video Assistant Referee) technology for the World Cup, humans are constantly applying new technologies to sports. Sports require technology, and technology also requires sports. Whether it's a mule or a horse, pull it out for a walk, "said an audience member in one sentence. Robot competition is a comprehensive testing of technology. Why engage in sports? ”Guo Dahong, Deputy General Manager of the Humanoid Robot Division of a technology enterprise in Jiangsu, said, "The purpose is to design the performance of robots to be more stable and reliable, and to expand into application fields. The endurance of marathons, the confrontation of combat, and the movement of dribbling simulate complex dynamic environments in reality, testing the comprehensive abilities of robots such as motion control, environmental perception, and energy management. Competitive sports have paved the way for robot development and testing, and also opened a window for robots to enter the public and market. Technological innovation also requires' faster, higher, stronger - more united '. Wang Yitao, the Director of Events at Xuanzhi (Shenzhen) Innovation Technology Co., Ltd., said, "Everyone is seeking breakthroughs. This sports event can showcase the cutting-edge technology of so many robot research and development companies, undoubtedly promoting cutting-edge information exchange and technology integration. Utilizing the high attention and entertainment value of sports events to promote robots from the laboratory to the public eye is also a great benefit for eliminating the public's sense of technological distance and enhancing social awareness. The robot sports meet received enthusiastic support from ordinary citizens. Mr. Wang from Shanghai came with his 6-year-old son to watch the game. He sighed that after a game, the child's interest in robots greatly increased, "much better than reading books". The heads of several participating companies expressed their hope to use the competition to gain more exposure for their robots, expand their application scenarios, and explore more potential market opportunities. Iron Athlete Goes On Stage: Why do participating robots persist in being humanoid? The humanoid robot "Tiangong Ultra" participating in Beijing Yizhuang Banma is 1.8 meters tall and has two long legs that are good at running; The 'Whirlwind Kid' with a stable center of gravity and long endurance is a small person wearing children's shoes; The robot "Acceleration T1" participating in the football match is only 1.2 meters tall, but it shoots the door without hesitation... These participating robots have different "heights, fatness, and thinness", but they all coincidentally imitate human shapes. As a machine, why persist in being a 'human'? If robots want to serve humans, they must first adapt to the human environment. ”Xu Baoguo, Deputy Director of the Institute of Robot Sensing and Control Technology at Southeast University, told reporters that in daily life, from the height of stairs to the shape of door handles, including the size of sports equipment on sports fields to the layout of competition venues, they are all customized according to the structure of the human body. "Just imagine that if the robot that plays football does not have two feet, but uses a wheeled chassis, it may never be able to adapt to the rules of the real stadium and football match." At the meeting of the humanoid robot 100 people meeting held in Wuxi at the same time, Ding Han, an academician of the CAS Member and professor of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, said that a human's two feet can walk to every corner of the world, and the humanoid robot has a highly universal form, which can be applied to various scenes and complex operations, so the humanoid robot is the best carrier of personal intelligence. Zhang Jianwei, a foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, believes that embodied intelligence is an important track for the future to truly connect the physical world and solve pain points in the physical world. Practice has proven that the humanoid design of robots has unique advantages when facing real-life scenarios. At the Beijing Yizhuang Half Marathon, the "Tiangong Ultra" robot successfully won the championship trophy with its humanoid joint structure. However, robots designed with caterpillar tracks do not perform as well as expected when facing complex terrain on the field. Personification is also more likely to evoke empathy among people. At the Beijing Yizhuang Half Marathon, the participating "Little Giant" robot appeared in the shape of a double meatball headed Nezha and interacted with the audience through internet memes, becoming an "internet celebrity" both inside and outside the arena. The innate affinity of humans towards humanoid forms is conducive to creating a future society of "human-machine co prosperity". Guo Dahong believes that with the development of technology, a new sports model of human-machine collaboration is expected to emerge. Compared to fighting against automated serving machines, the effectiveness of athletes training against humanoid robots will be greatly improved. Ding Han's focus on the future growth of robots is also in the service sector, such as medical rehabilitation, elderly care, and home care robots, which are of great significance for addressing challenges such as an aging society. Learning to walk unsteadily "is for the purpose of" flying fast ": why do robot athletes have some" food "? The robot completion rate of the Beijing Yizhuang Half Marathon is only 30%, and the championship time of 2 hours, 40 minutes, and 42 seconds is far from the best result of a human marathon runner; At the football match of the first embodied intelligent robot sports meet, a robot player tripped and was "injured" by himself, and was carried out of the field by staff on stretchers, contributing a lot of laughter to the audience... The performance of the robot on the field fell short of the sci-fi scene expected by the public, and even repeatedly "overturned", which contrasts with the public's exclamation when ChatGPT and DeepSeek emerged. Zhang Jianwei stated that ChatGPT and DeepSeek are only similar to the "brain regions" where we process text, but motion and other scenarios involve the control of the "cerebellum" and the joint control of multiple modalities such as vision, hearing, and touch, which are much more complex. If robots accidentally make a fool of themselves, we will actually be 'happier'. ”Wang Yitao said that the motion control of robots in dynamic and complex environments is extremely challenging, and the team hopes to use this to test stability and collect feedback data as much as possible in "actual combat" to improve and enhance. Robots take one small step, humans take one big step. At present, robot athletes are learning to walk like infants, precisely to move towards "walking like flying". Seemingly clumsy, but in reality, it has enormous potential. ”Xu Baoguo is a die hard fan of the Robot Games. In his view, the involvement of humanoid robots in sports has the potential to drive technological breakthroughs in local fields. For example, combat projects promote the development of flexible confrontation and rapid response strategies, football projects promote team collaboration algorithm optimization, and running projects test gait control and energy management. Once these achievements mature, they will also empower human-machine coexistence and collaboration application scenarios such as rehabilitation training, assisted sports, and disaster rescue, with extremely high application value and commercial potential. Are dancing on the Spring Festival Gala stage and playing soccer on the sports field the same type of robot? Experts explain that although dancing and soccer are both "sports", their dynamic control goals, rhythm response, and stability strategies are different. At present, most robots use targeted optimization algorithms, which have poor universality. With the continuous breakthroughs in key technologies such as multimodal fusion, meta learning, and online adaptive control, the multi skilled and versatile mobile phone users are expected to meet us in the near future. For future questions, the answers are often hidden in history. In 1894, the French held the first car race, and only 9 of the 102 cars registered completed the 128 km race, which was not as stable and fast as carriages; When the world's first modern electronic digital computer was born in the United States in 1946, it weighed tens of tons and took several days to adjust each calculation task. Making robots as flexible and intelligent as humans is the highest dream of humanoid robot development, but in the process of technological evolution, it requires a lot of trial and error and patience. From the Spring Festival Gala stage to the sports arena, embodied intelligent robots have begun to enter daily life scenarios, taking the first step towards entering ordinary households. Let's wait and see. (New Society)