China started on Friday (15) to World Humanoid Robot Gamesa three -day event that seeks to demonstrate its advances in artificial intelligence e robotics. The event has the participation of 280 teams from 16 countries.
Robots competed in sports such as athletics and table tennis, as well as facing specific challenges, such as medicines organization, material handling and cleaning services.
Teams from Germany, Brazil and the United States, among others, participated in the event, with 192 of them representing universities and 88 goings from private companies, such as Chinese Unitree e Fourier Intelligence. The competitor teams used robots from Chinese manufacturers such as Booster Robotics.
Max Polter, a member of the HTWK robots soccer team from Germany, affiliated with Leipzig’s University of Applied Sciences, said: “We came here to play and to win, but we are also interested in research. You can test many new and interesting approaches in this competition. If we try something and don’t work, we lose the game. This is sad, but better than investing a lot of money in a product that failed.”
At Beijing Games, which charged between 128 and 580 yuans (R $ 90 and R $ 430) by entry, the humanoids collided with each other and repeatedly fell during the football matches. Other robots collapsed in the middle of the race at athletics events.
In a soccer match, four robots crashed into a tangled hill. At the 1500 -meter race event, a robot suddenly collapsed as it ran at full speed, causing viewers’ sighs and applause.
Despite the frequent falls that demanded the help of humans to put the robots standing, many managed to straighten alone, which yielded applause from the audience.
The organizers stated that games provide valuable opportunities for data collection aimed at developing robots for practical applications such as work in factories.
Commentators said football matches help train robot coordination, which could be useful for assembly line operations that require collaboration between several units.
The robotics, while the country deals with the aging of the population and the growing competition with the US for advanced technologies.
In recent months, the country has held a series of outstanding robotics events, including what it called the world’s first marathon of the world in Beijing, a robotics conference and the opening of retail stores dedicated to humanoid robots.
In a Morgan Stanley reports of last week, they noticed an increase in the general public participation in a recent robotics conference compared to previous years, saying that this shows “how China, not just the high government authorities, has embraced the concept of incorporated intelligence.”
