China has held the world's first robot martial arts tournament and I can't think of a single thing that could possibly go wrong

The world’s first humanoid robot boxing match - YouTube

We can surely all agree there's absolutely nothing to be concerned about when it comes to robots and AI. So, it makes perfect sense to hold what's claimed to be the world's first martial arts tournament for robots. It's all completely harmless fun and games, nothing that remotely brings to mind Cyberdyne Systems Model 101 gone rogue. Nope.

Anyway, the China Media Group World Robot Competition Mecha Fighting Series reportedly kicked off—literally—on May 25 in Hangzhou, China. According to Asia Times, the tournament included Unitree Robotics G1 robots weighing in at 35 kilograms and 132 centimeters tall.

The G1 is actually available to buy from $16,000, just in case you want your own killing machine, sorry friendly household bot, and it comes with 3D LIDAR and two-hour battery life. Inevitably, the robots run AI models trained on data capture of the movements of kickboxers for the tournament, but it's not clear if that particular mapping is available to Unitree customers. We suspect not.

Each fight was made up of three rounds of two minutes each, with a punch scoring one point, and a kick three. Five points were deducted for falling over and 10 points if the bot failed to stand up within eight seconds.

Li Gaofeng, a researcher at Zhejiang University’s College of Control Science and Engineering, said, "combat fight is a difficult task for humanoid robots due to the intensive confrontation during the fight. Robots need to mind their movements and react to their opponent’s moves. All these requirements significantly challenge the robots’ algorithms, electronic parts and speed reducers.”

That said, the robots were not fully autonomous. Human operator teams controlled the robots, "in a human-machine collaborative way," according to Chen Xiyun of Unitree Robotics.

If all this sounds like a robot zombie apocalypse in the making, a quick scan of the Youtube highlights paints a slightly different picture. While some of the moves are impressive, more often the bots are flailing around, punching at thin air or tripping over themselves. It's more the stuff of comedy than nightmares.

Indeed, human overlords wielding some kind of remote controllers can be seen on the sidelines. So, it seems like the AI element is limited to the specifics of a given kick or punch in response to commands, very much like playing, ya know, a video game. We're a long way off bots that can do their own fighting thing, if this tournament is anything to go by.

That said, this stuff is undeniably developing fast and probably wouldn't have been possible at all, even with the existing caveats, a few years ago. Who's to say these things won't dancing around and then right out of the ring in a few years, fully capable of a deftly choreographed murderous rampage? What a time to be alive—for as long as you can outrun the robots...

Jeremy has been writing about technology and PCs since the 90nm Netburst era (Google it!) and enjoys nothing more than a serious dissertation on the finer points of monitor input lag and overshoot followed by a forensic examination of advanced lithography. Or maybe he just likes machines that go “ping!” He also has a thing for tennis and cars.

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