近日，百岁山宣布与亚洲排球联合会（AVC）达成全新合作，正式成为亚洲女子排球锦标赛的官方饮用水合作伙伴。              
On the blue track inside the National Speed Skating Oval, robots chased each other in the 400-meter race. A sprinting Tien Kung robot was tripped by a rival robot lying on the track but did not fall. Instead, it adjusted its posture in seconds and continued toward the finish line with a result of 38.15 seconds, breaking human 400-meter race world record of 43.03 seconds, held by South African athlete Wayde van Niekerk. 
This scene unfolded on Sunday, the first official competition day of the 2nd World Humanoid Robot Games (WHRG). Later that evening, a humanoid robot named Lightning, developed by Honor Co., broke the long-standing human 1,500-meter world record of 3:26 set by Moroccan athlete Hicham El Guerrouj with a time of 2:30.22. Just one night earlier, during the opening ceremony's 100-meter sprint and high jump demonstrations, humanoid robots had already shattered records long held by human athletes Usain Bolt and Javier Sotomayor — merely an appetizer for the five-day sci-fi spectacle.
The Games have attracted 666 teams from 16 countries across six continents, up 138 percent from its inaugural edition. The number of participating robots quadrupled to 2,056, the Global Times learned from the organizing committee.
Yet the biggest change this year was not only the scale, but also the technological maturity. More teams have shifted from remote-controlled robots to fully autonomous systems. Chinese observers, after watching several events, said humanoid robots are no longer limited to simple demonstrations of walking or dancing. Increasingly, they are being tested in environments that demand speed, coordination, perception and decision-making.
From movement to intelligence

Behind the record-breaking performances are a series of technological upgrades. During the running events, Global Times reporters observed that robots were able to make subtle movements around their hip joints while walking, allowing them to maintain balance and produce movements closer to human biomechanics.
Guo Yijie, technical director of Tien Kung Ultra, said the improvement came from advances in hardware design.
"Robot joints have improved in torque and speed. As competitions demand higher power output, the reliability of the main control board, power board and high-power battery discharge capability have become increasingly important," Guo told the Global Times.
According to Guo, the same Tien Kung Ultra robot was used in both sprinting and jumping events. For running, the waist needs rotation to balance the inertia generated by leg movements. For jumping, the upper body requires pitching movement to help the robot achieve greater distance or height, Guo said, noting that these can all be achieved with only slight adjustments to the waist configuration were needed, and it highly demonstrated to the robot design's flexibility.
Besides the hardware upgrades, developments in robots' faster decision-making in "brains' is better showcased in football competitions.
The Booster T2 robot used by many domestic and overseas football teams has increased its onboard computing capability by 10 times compared with the previous generation. The time from recognizing the goal to deciding whether to pass or shoot has been reduced to around 100 milliseconds - faster than the time humans usually need to blink.
Cheng Hao, a technical representative from Boosters Robotics, said the improvement represents an "end-to-end" transformation in embodied intelligence.
"In the past, robots relied on separate steps: perception, planning, decision-making and execution. Each stage was disconnected. Now, with an end-to-end motion foundation model, visual input can directly generate joint control commands," Cheng said.
The newly introduced table tennis and tennis competitions are also testing another important capability: perception.
"Robots are moving from simply recognizing the three-dimensional position of a ball to understanding the movement information of opponents and more complex environments," said Li Yinghui, a postdoc researcher and the leader from the Hong Kong University team at the table tennis event. Such capabilities developed in sports scenarios could eventually be transferred to other scenarios in industries or daily life, Li said. 
Beyond entertainment
Though clips from the robot competitions have made a buzz on social media, with some critics from Western media questioning why robots need to dance, play football or compete in athletics while arguing that these activities appear far from everyday needs.
Zhou Changjiu, Vice President of the RoboCup Federation and the Robotics Competition Association of the Asia-Pacific (RCAP), stressed robot sports are not designed for entertainment alone. "Robot competitions are testing the capabilities needed for humanoid robots to enter the real world," Zhou told the Global Times.
Different events evaluate different abilities. Sprinting tests speed, marathons examine battery endurance and energy management, while football provides a comprehensive test because of its dynamic and unpredictable nature, testing intelligence, manipulation, interaction, safety, cost and trust at the same time, Zhou said.
Unlike a single-task demonstration, football requires robots to cooperate. Players must understand their own roles, recognize teammates and opponents, and make collective decisions - a form of swarm intelligence that could become essential when robots work together in homes, factories and emergency rescue environments.
Entertainment, however, can generate business opportunities. Gu Jinghai, brand director of EYOU Robot Co, told the Global Times that the company sold 95,000 integrated joints in China in 2025 and expects sales to exceed 1 million units in 2026. Growth mainly comes from planetary joints used in entertainment robots, while harmonic joints for industrial robots are also expanding steadily, he said. 
Jiao Jichao, an executive from UBTECH Robotics, said the criticism that "Chinese robots can only sing and dance" reflects only a temporary stage of development. "Performance and dancing are also real commercial demands, and their existence has value," Jiao said. "Beyond entertainment, Chinese robots are already demonstrating intelligent capabilities that support practical applications in manufacturing, and partnerships with companies including Huawei and Foxconn, where robots have already entered production lines in small-scale applications."
The Outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development of China stated that the country will construct a comprehensive cultivation system for future industries including the embody intelligence as new economic growth drivers.
Zhou said the development of humanoid robots is not only about individual machines, but about building an entire ecosystem.
China's advantage lies in its complete supply chain, abundant application scenarios and manufacturing capabilities, while the fast growing industry still faces challenges such as the lack of unified standards.
Gu said the company has launched mass production of robotics joint under domestic standard of auto parts. 
Robot competitions can help address these issues by creating common standards in areas such as competition rules, robot dimensions, communication systems, batteries and joint modules. "As applications expand, the cost of key robot components will continue to decline," Zhou said. 
"Numbers are magic," Zhou said. "If producing one robot costs a huge amount because it is handmade, producing one million robots will completely change the cost structure."
For humanoid robots, the race taking place inside the Ice Ribbon may not ultimately be about who crosses the finish line first. It may be about whether these machines can learn to navigate the far more complicated race outside the stadium - the race into the real world.
。排球世界（Volleyball World）首席执行官Ugo Valensi、亚洲排球联合会（AVC）代表Ramon Suzara、景田集团品牌总经理汪梅花及行业嘉宾共同出席签约仪式。此次携手不仅延续了双方长期以来的战略默契，更彰显了百岁山以体育为纽带，深耕全球市场、向全球展示中国品牌和态度，并推动排球运动高质量发展的坚定决心。一、一路同行：见证排球荣耀之路百岁山与排球运动的渊源由来已久。自2009年起，百岁山便成为中国排球协会官方合作伙伴。2018年，百岁山更是成为国际排联（FIVB）首个来自中国的全球合作伙伴，先后为世界排球联赛（VNL）、女排世锦赛等顶级赛事保驾护航。

二 | 亚洲作为全球排球人口最密集、发展潜力最大的地区，亚锦赛汇聚了顶尖队伍与亿万球迷的期盼。百岁山将深度融入赛事服务体系，从运动员饮水补给到全程赛事保障，与AVC共同致力于扩大排球在亚洲的受众圈层，深化与各地球迷的情感连接，推动排球运动在亚洲的长足发展。二、全球版图：体育营销背后的品牌格局百岁山以“水中贵族”为品牌内核，构建了覆盖多领域的全球体育合作版图：从FIBA篮球世界杯、世界羽联赛事到WTT乒乓球赛事，百岁山持续亮相世界各大顶级赛场；在足球领域，与尤文图斯续签五年合作协议，并推出“青春圆梦计划”，搭建球迷与国际顶级俱乐部之间的情感桥梁；同时，通过多元赛事赞助与活动推广，激发大众运动热情，带动更多消费者参与基层体育活动。这些努力，不仅让百岁山成为国际赛场的“中国名片”，更让世界看到中国品牌的责任与格局。三、品质如山：以品质之力护航体育梦想面对全球体育赛场的严苛考验，百岁山始终将“高品质”作为破局与发展的核心引擎。其天然矿泉水采自地下深层岩层，富含偏硅酸等珍稀矿物质，能精准补充运动员流失的微量元素，做赛场上的“隐形队友”。同时，百岁山采用德国克朗斯顶尖生产线，以严苛品控推动中国矿泉水行业与国际接轨，并以顶级赛事赞助为载体，积极践行社会责任，倡导健康生活方式。百岁山的体育营销，不止于品牌的单向传递，更是一场与体育精神的双向奔赴。水是载体，亦是纽带——它连接的不只是运动员与观众，更是文化与热爱。当百岁山的专业品质遇上排球的拼搏基因，两者便产生了最深层的共鸣。

三 | 未来，百岁山将继续以体育为支点，让中国品牌的力量在世界赛场上生根发芽，与全球体育事业共赴下一程山海。