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Humanoid robots can run and box, but folding clothes is the real test

Wai-keung Fung of Cardiff Metropolitan University writes that at the World Humanoid Robot Games 2026, Tiangong Ultra completed the 100 meters in 8.64 seconds, faster than Usain Bolt's 9.58-second world record, but soft manipulation tasks such as folding clothes and doing laundry are a better test of robot intelligence. The article notes that fabric shapes vary widely and skills are hard to transfer directly between robots with different configurations and sensors, and that Open X-Embodiment is exploring this problem by gathering over a million real trajectories from 22 kinds of robots.

Part of the event: Humanoid robots excel in locomotion, but flexible manipulation remains difficult

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