China is stepping up efforts to develop AI-powered humanoid robots, using sports competitions like marathons, boxing, and football as a real-world proving ground.

Cheng Hao, founder and CEO of Booster Robotics, the company, said sports competitions offer the ideal testing ground for humanoid robots, helping to accelerate the development of both algorithms and integrated hardware-software systems. He also emphasised safety as a core concern in the application of humanoid robots.

“In future, we may arrange for robots to play football with humans. That means we must ensure the robots are safe. For example, a robot and a human could play a match where winning doesn’t matter, but real offensive and defensive interactions take place. That would help audiences build trust and understand that robots are safe,” Cheng said.