You’ve seen the videos of those humanoid robots running 100 meters in less than 10 seconds from a standing start. To qualify as “humanoid”, the robot has to have just two legs, with knees and hips in about the right spot? Does it have to have two arms? Any limit on size or weight? If someone entered a 10-ft robot with legs 8 or 9 feet long, would it be allowed?
It’s surprising that these races aren’t more famous, astonishing as they are. Keeping its balance while walking is astonishing enough. The robot is standing upright on the start line – it leans forward as it lifts one thigh and swings it forward, placing its foot the right distance ahead of its center of gravity, which is moving forward, allowing it to lift its trailing foot as the forward ankle hinges the right amount … and so on and so on. The flat feet stay flat on the ground? How do the robots run straight enough, not tangling with each other?
I suspect that they’re not “competitions”, per se, but showcases, put on by Boston Dynamics or some similar company to show off their technology, and that anything that looks suitably impressive would be accepted as an “entry”.
It’s mostly the Chinese now, actually. Boston Dynamics was bought a while ago (by Hyundai) and isn’t quite the (premier) frontier lab it once was. They still do R&D, but Chinese robotics have advanced leaps and bounds in the last decade or so… quite literally, in this case
The second edition features 2,056 robots from 666 teams competing in 51 events: 30 competitive events, including football, athletics, dance, table tennis and tug of war,[10] and 21 scenario-based events simulating household and hotel services, industrial tasks, firefighting and rescue.[11]
Does “humanoid” mean two legs with knees and hips in about the right place? It needs two legs (a “biped structure”) plus a head, torso and upper limbs. The rules say nothing about joint placement or leg design.
Does it have to have two arms? It must have “upper limbs” (上肢), but the rule doesn’t give a number. Two is the natural reading, not a stated requirement, and the arms don’t have to do anything.
Any limit on size or weight? There’s no weight limit and no maximum height. The 100 m has two classes: small (≤ 1.4 m) and large (> 1.4 m).
Would a 10-ft robot with 8–9 ft legs be allowed? Nothing prohibits it, and it would race in the large class. The real constraints:
Lanes are 2.1 m wide, with penalties for interfering with neighbors.
The robot must be a single self-powered unit with no tethers.
It needs an emergency stop.
The organizing committee rules on anything the regulations don’t cover.
Do the flat feet stay flat on the ground? Gait isn’t regulated. The only foot rule is at the start: a standing start with no blocks, and both feet planted and motionless from “on your marks” until the gun. A first false start gets a yellow card; a second gets the robot sent off.
How do they run straight without tangling? On their own: the 100 m must be fully autonomous, and teams can’t place guide markers on the field. Leaving the lane isn’t penalized if it bothers no one. Affecting another robot costs 30 s per incident, contact costs 45 s, and the affected team can request a rerun.
(Chronos) Are these just company showcases? No. It’s a formal competition run by the Beijing government and CCTV, among others, with referees, cards, medals, an appeals process, and a limit of one robot per organization per event.
I suspect the Games weren’t so much meant for pure entertainment (the way, say, Robot Wars was), but more an opportunity for the Chinese government to put out propaganda (look how far we’ve gotten), and for the competing firms themselves to attract investors and talent.
以赛促研、以赛育才、以赛兴业
“Use competition to drive research, develop talent, and grow industry”
(Similar mottos are apparently typical for CCP-sponsored events)
As such, robots that deliberately bend the rules just to win the game would likely not be as interesting to investors (who are probably looking for more “normal” humanoids). And bending too much would probably invoke the unspoken ire of the CCP and cause more issues than merely losing the race… if the organizing committee didn’t simply wave them away at entry.
That said, though, they still DO optimize for the rules a bit, just within the normal humanoid shape. That the robots run head-first into the foam barrier at the end of the 100m without trying to slow down is because the rules don’t require it… adding a graceful deceleration wouldn’t get them any points.
I wasn’t there to see it live, but it seems like a lot of effort to fake something like that, almost moon-landing-conspiracy level. The CCP would have very little to gain from faking advances in humanoid robots like this; they really do want to develop the technology for industry (and probably war, like us). There are a lot of videos about it from different networks. And plenty of unpolished failures and crashes in the games themselves.
Not to say it CAN’T be AI, but that’s not what I would think at first glance.
I’d also hope that the AP would at least do a minimum level of due diligence before airing AI slop…
I’m not declaring I think the video AI, I said it looks a lot like it. But I guess that says a lot about the state of robotics. Things that seemed strange to my eye, the third sprinting robot slid into the barrier as if sliding into home (could it ‘see’ the barrier? The first 2 apparently did not), the boxing robot dropping it’s head after falling down - that’s a human-like emotion. Again not that they can’t be programmed for that and apparently they are but I guess that stuff is so amazing these days that they almost don’t look real (to me anyway).
Hopefully “a robot may not injure a human being, or allow a human to come to harm through inaction.” and “a robot must obey all human orders…” are among the rules.
It seems we are barely able (as in: they are still leading-edge) to produce running robots - so that might as well be the 1st, 2nd or 3rd time those races are around … that lack of history might explain that.
Heh, Asimov would probably be pretty dismayed at the way things played out, with all AI and robotics controlled by warmongering nations and the uber rich. No ethics anywhere in sight.
I think we’d sooner see robot vs slave gladiator deathmatches than an ethical robot…
