Robot coffee shops, engineers working in the corridors, an unreleased Booster T2 in the pit, and children cheering for the slowest robots in Beijing.
The World Humanoid Robot Games took over Beijing’s National Speed Skating Oval, the “Ice Ribbon,” the venue built for speed skating at the 2022 Winter Olympics.
The skating track became a 100-meter and 400-meter running course for humanoid robots. In the center were courts for soccer, tennis and other events. Over five days, robots competed in weightlifting and standing long jump, but also in convenience-store restocking, tool use and other tasks closer to RoboCup@Home.
There will be plenty of reports about who won and how fast the fastest humanoid ran.
So for this field note, I spent more time walking around the venue.
What happens when a robot fails while selling a drink? What do the teams look like when they are repairing their robots? Who is providing the motion capture and communications infrastructure? What happens in the rooms behind the competition floor?
And what do ordinary visitors — especially children — actually do when hundreds of robots suddenly become part of the environment?
I filmed the whole walk.
▶ Watch the 18-minute field report on YouTube:https://medium.com/media/51dadc925ac8e2399eac1ec8f03a9183/hrefBuying a drink from GalbotNear the entrance, a Galbot robot was selling drinks from a small convenience-store setup.
You selected a product, and the robot arm picked it from the shelf.
It did not always work.
A staff member stood next to the robot the entire time. The gripper sometimes missed the product, and when that happened, the human stepped in and fixed the problem.
So this was not an autonomous store.
But visitors were actually using it.
That distinction is interesting. In a laboratory, the question may be whether the system succeeds or fails. In a real service environment, another option appears: let the robot handle most of the operation, and let a person recover the occasional failure.
The same pattern appeared throughout the venue.
There were robot arms making coffee, ice cream and snacks. A humanoid was working behind another counter. AgiBot hardware was being used by companies building applications around it. Staff wearing Astribot shirts were operating another service demonstration.
Some humanoids were doing simple tasks slowly: cutting a cucumber, moving objects from one place to another.
None of this looked like the end of human labor.
But if a robot coffee shop is sitting in the middle of a robot sports event, people will try it. Children gather around it. Visitors buy something partly because a robot made it.
Before widespread deployment comes a much simpler step: ordinary people have to use a robot once.
This event creates thousands of those first encounters.Children watching engineers repair robots in the corridorThe Ice Ribbon is enormous, but there were so many teams that some ended up working on their robots outside the main pit areas.
Students were sitting in corridors with humanoids opened up in front of them. Covers were removed, exposing motors, wiring and mechanical parts.
Children gathered around them.
Some of the children in red shirts appeared to be reporters for a children’s newspaper. They were interviewing participants.
Elsewhere, soccer teams were simply walking through the venue with humanoid robots sitting on top of suitcases. People were dancing next to robots. Children watched the robots and copied their movements.
This made the venue feel very different from a conventional technology exhibition.
The robots were not isolated behind glass.
The competitors, engineers, robots and audience were mixed together — sometimes enough to make the corridors difficult to walk through.
Competition participants were also taking photographs around the venue while spectators called out to them. Engineers were becoming minor celebrities.
That reminded me more of Maker Faire than of a conventional industrial exhibition.
People were interested not only in the machine, but in the person who built it.An unreleased Booster T2 in the pitI ran into members of the RoboCup Asia-Pacific organization from Singapore.
Some of them have also been involved with Maker Faire and know me from my Singapore Maker Faire days. We recognized each other immediately, and I ended up going into the pit area with them.
At the Booster Robotics pit, several robots were being tested and adjusted.
One of them was the Booster T2, which had not yet been officially released.
I had already seen the Booster T1 many times at RoboCup in Incheon earlier this year. The T1 was already capable, but watching the T2 from a few meters away, the motion looked noticeably more human.
It approached the ball and kicked it.
Sometimes it missed.
Staff were standing immediately beside the robot, ready to catch or support it while tuning the system.
The planned seven-on-seven soccer demonstration was also expected to use the T2.
RoboCup has been working on robot soccer since the 1990s, with its famous long-term goal of building a robot team capable of defeating the human World Cup champions by 2050.
The individual problems have remained surprisingly consistent: find the ball, approach it, kick it, maintain balance, get up after falling.
That makes robot soccer useful as a benchmark.
If you watch it every few years, you can see the accumulated engineering progress very clearly.
And watching engineers repeatedly test, miss, adjust and try again in the pit usually tells me more than watching the polished match itself.Last year this was a media room. Now it is a robot test center.Behind the competition area is another space I had visited before.
When I came to Beijing for the Booster K1 launch last year, it was a media waiting room.
This year it had become a robot testing center.
There were mock bedrooms, office areas and domestic environments. Teams could test tasks similar to RoboCup@Home before taking their robots into the main competition.
Some of this year’s challenges involved surprisingly fine manipulation, including plugging in USB cables and power plugs.
Those tasks could be rehearsed here before the official run.
More interestingly, the plan is apparently to keep the facility after the Games and continue using it for robot training and evaluation.
That changes what an event like this leaves behind.
A competition requires teams, rules, test environments, networks and infrastructure. If all of that disappears after the closing ceremony, it is an event.
If part of it remains and becomes a permanent development environment, it becomes industrial infrastructure.
I have seen something similar, at a much smaller scale, around Maker Faire. Preparing for a large event forces companies and communities that normally work separately to cooperate.
Here in Beijing, the same mechanism is operating with much larger amounts of capital, government involvement and industrial resources.OptiTrack above the track, China Unicom behind the networkOnce you start looking away from the robots themselves, the technical infrastructure becomes obvious.
Motion-capture cameras were everywhere.
Unitree robots were being demonstrated with markers attached to their bodies. Tennis and table-tennis events also relied heavily on motion capture.
Among the technology suppliers were OptiTrack, iFLYTEK and Booster. OptiTrack was supporting motion capture across the venue.
China Unicom was providing communications infrastructure.
Its exhibition area included cloud AI services, model platforms and communications management for robots. Competition control, video transmission and remote systems all depend on reliable networks.
There were also insurance companies, banks, automotive companies, media partners and investment organizations.
Shougang Fund was not only investing in robot companies but also providing business support and robot rental services.
Looking only at the competitors, the Games can appear to be a collection of Chinese humanoid startups.
Looking at the sponsors and suppliers gives a wider picture.
Telecommunications companies, motion-capture vendors, insurers, investors, media companies and industrial suppliers are all looking for a position in the same emerging market.The crowd cheering for a slow robotNear the end of the day, I went inside to watch the 100-meter sprint.
The performance difference was enormous.
The fastest humanoids were around the ten-second range.
Others were much slower.
One of those slower robots was making its way down the track when people in the stands began shouting encouragement.
“Go! Go!”
The robot kept moving.
The crowd kept cheering.
People did not lose interest simply because the robot was slow. If anything, a slightly awkward robot struggling toward the finish line became easier to support.
The same thing had been happening outside the stadium all day.
Children copied dancing robots.
Visitors bought robot-made coffee.
They watched students repair machines in the corridor.
They took photographs with teams and engineers.
One booth even displayed a very serious message saying that, in the near future, humans would actually meet “silicon life.” Nearby slogans talked about coexistence between humans and robots, and harmony between carbon and silicon.
On closer inspection, some of this was connected to a company selling silicon-life-themed mascots and merchandise.
Still, putting a message like “Love silicon life” in front of a general audience says something about the atmosphere of the event.
The Games were not only presenting robots as industrial equipment.
They were presenting robots as something people should get used to having around.
At the closing ceremony, the robots wearing medals stood in front.
Their human operators stood behind them.
For once, the robots really were the athletes.
The World Humanoid Robot Games can easily be summarized as a competition where humanoids run 100 meters, play soccer and perform various tasks.
Walking through the whole venue gives a different impression.
Robots compete on the track. They make coffee outside it. Students repair them in the corridor. Telecom companies build the network. Motion-capture companies cover the stadium with cameras. Investors and sponsors fund the ecosystem. Downstairs, teams train robots in mock bedrooms and offices.
And thousands of ordinary visitors spend the day watching all of this happen.
Someone who watches a slightly clumsy robot today may want to build a better one a few years from now.
▶ Watch the full World Humanoid Robot Games 2026 field report:https://medium.com/media/51dadc925ac8e2399eac1ec8f03a9183/hrefNico-Tech Shenzhen Field Notes covers robotics, AI, hardware and manufacturing from China and around the world.
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Inside the World Humanoid Robot Games 2026 - Beyond the 100-Meter Sprint