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Humanoid robots excel in locomotion, but flexible manipulation remains difficult
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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 Bolt's world record of 9.58 seconds, but flexible tasks such as folding clothes and doing laundry are better tests of robot intelligence. The article notes that cloth shapes are highly variable, and skills are difficult to transfer directly between robots with different configurations and sensors; the Open X-Embodiment project is gathering over one million real trajectories from 22 kinds of robots to explore this problem.
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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.
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