The 2025 World Humanoid Robot Games will take place from August 15 to 17 at Beijing's National Stadium (Bird's Nest) and National Speed Skating Oval (Ice Ribbon), with a series of main events and peripheral events.

The games will feature 19 events across three main categories (i.e. athletic competitions, performance showcases and scenario-based challenges), aiming to present the diversity, creativity and practicality of robotics applications.

Modeled on traditional human sports events, the athletic competitions will have 11 events, including seven track and field disciplines, freestyle gymnastics, and 2x2, 3x3 and 5x5 soccer matches. These are designed to test humanoid robots' athletic skills, coordination and teamwork capabilities.

The performance showcases will include solo and group robot dances, highlighting robots' whole-body real-time coordinated motion control and multi-robot collaboration through artistic choreography, music backings and creative movements.

The scenario-based challenges will focus on real-world application scenarios, with six events across industrial, hospital-based, and hotel-based environments. The industrial scenarios will include handling and sorting of materials. The hospital-based scenarios will include sorting and packaging of Drugs. The hotel-based scenarios are about hospitality and cleaning services. All are aimed at demonstrating the practical skills and intelligence of humanoid robots.

Three peripheral events will feature non-humanoid robots playing badminton, basketball and table tennis, with a special focus on entertainment and audience interaction.

Every participating humanoid robot should meet six criteria:

1. The robot should be independently developed or procured by the participating team.

2. The robot should operate as a whole, which means that it cannot be dismantled into parts or cable-connected components. No field markers are allowed.

3. The robot should have a torso, upper limbs, and two feet, with the maximum reach from the center of mass to the foot soles being 40 percent to 70 percent of its body height. For the scenario-based challenges, lower limbs may be wheeled or bipedal.

4. The robot should have its own power source(s) without using any hazardous ones.

5. Control modes can be either manual remote or fully autonomous.

6. Each participating team should provide its own network connection during the games.

Eligible teams include Chinese and foreign enterprises in the relevant fields, universities, sci-tech research institutes, innovation teams, clubs, and other social organizations. Each team may partake in multiple events and use different robots for different events, but robot swapping during a single event is not allowed. Each team should have no more than five members, with a maximum of two members allowed to enter the competition venue during the competition period. The 4×100m relay race can be jointly participated by up to four teams, while other events are only allowed to participate independently.

Registration for the games is not yet open. Please visit the games' official website (https://www.whrgoc.com) for more information.

(Sources: Beijing Fabu, The Beijing News)