Technical progress is measured most clearly on the track. The champion, Tiangong Ultra, needed 21.50 seconds for the 100 meters at the first Games in 2025, when it was the only finalist to complete the course fully autonomously. A year later, the same robot model ran the final in 8.64 seconds, with autonomous control now mandatory in the 100-meter races. Usain Bolt's world record, still the fastest by any human, stands at 9.58 seconds.

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The Limits of Speed

The gains are just as striking over longer distances. The best time over 400 meters fell within a year from 1:28.03 minutes to 38.15 seconds, while the best time over 1,500 meters dropped from 6:34.40 to 2:21.64 minutes. In the standing high jump, the best mark rose from just under one meter to 3.40 meters. The progress is not confined to speed alone: it shows equally in balance, motion control and the performance of motors and joints.

The machines ran, jumped, boxed, lifted weights and practiced Chinese martial arts. They played soccer and table tennis, assembled blocks and tried their hand at picking up small objects with tweezers. One robot even faced off against a human in a tennis demonstration. Progress in fast, predefined movement sequences has become so pronounced that several performances have already surpassed human track-and-field records.

The limits of the technology, however, became clear just a few meters past the finish line. Tiangong Ultra could run far faster than Usain Bolt, but it could not reliably brake. Several robots slammed into padded barriers after their races, sending sparks flying in some cases, while staff stood by with fire extinguishers. Almost all of the finalists in the 100-meter race had to be carried off the track afterward.

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Small Tasks, Big Trouble

The machines now handle narrowly defined, even very fast, movement tasks remarkably well. The difficulty arises when transitioning between different movement states and reacting flexibly to their surroundings. For bipeds, braking is such a complex process that it still overwhelms the machines.

The gap to humans widens further when the tasks look far less spectacular. In one test, robots were set the challenge of driving nails with a hammer. According to a report in the scientific journal Nature, many machines struggled considerably with this, even when a human remotely controlled their movements. Plugging a cable into a socket, opening bottles or picking up beans with tweezers proved more demanding for the machines than any jump or sprint.

The cooking competition told a similar story. There, a robot had to use tongs to grab, among other items, a steamed bun and a dumpling, then heat the food independently in a microwave and pour a drink. The tongs alone caused trouble for numerous robots: the machine must recognize the object, grip it correctly and apply enough pressure, all while preventing the soft dumpling from being crushed or dropped.

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China's Home Advantage

Laundry also remains a challenge. Where a human folds a piece of clothing in a matter of seconds, robots in the Beijing tests sometimes needed one to two minutes for the same task. Elsewhere, in an actual hotel, other machines were given 30 minutes to transport luggage, hang up towels, collect trash and make a bed. Narrow hallways and doorframes alone caused problems, with robots colliding into doors or luggage carts whenever their positioning was not precise enough.

China no longer wants its competition simply to demonstrate that humanoid machines can walk or dance. Organizers have deliberately moved part of the tests into real or realistic work environments, rating tasks completed fully autonomously more highly than those relying on remote control. The Beijing government explicitly describes practical application as the most important driver of the industry's development, and according to its own figures, about a quarter of China's manufacturers of complete humanoid robots are already based in the capital.

The current state of the technology can be summed up in two images: a humanoid robot today needs less than nine seconds for the 100 meters, compared with more than 21 seconds a year ago, yet a pair of tongs holding a soft dumpling can still be an almost unsolvable problem for it.

There is some consolation for Germany, at least in robot soccer, where the country sits right at the top. Two German teams faced each other in the final: the HTWK Robots from the Leipzig University of Applied Sciences (HTWK Leipzig) against Team B-Human from Bremen. The result was 3:13 in favor of the Bremen side.