Chinese humanoid robots, between combat demonstrations and violent incidents

At IFA 2026 in Berlin, the T800 robot, developed by Chinese company EngineAI, threw punches and kicks in front of the technology fair’s audience. The exhibition comes as a Reuters investigation documented the existence of Chinese military research specifically dedicated to combat humanoids, a finding that places the Berlin demonstrations within a broader context of dual-use technological development, both civilian and military.

In the same trade fair context, two G1 robots from the company Unitree faced off in a simulated boxing match: every movement of the two humanoids was actually guided by an operator hidden via remote control, not by an autonomous system. The distinction is not minor, because it separates what the public observes as a choreographed spectacle from what the systems are capable of doing without direct supervision.

Outside controlled trade fairs, the dossier reports less managed episodes. In Russia, a humanoid produced by Volga Electronics assumed a kung-fu pose after being bumped by a customer. In China, during test sessions, a robot struck a present technician in the groin and another slapped a minor during a public demonstration, episodes that the dossier does not attribute to a single company nor places within a context of centralized control or established responsibility.

On the front of official competitions, at the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing the Tiangong Ultra robot completed the 100 meters in 8.64 seconds, improving on the previous record of 8.86 seconds. At the same event, the company AgiBot won 46 medals, debuting in first place in the event’s overall medal table, a sign of an industrial competition measured as much by athletic performance as by the number of participating companies.

The picture that emerges brings together two distinct levels: on one hand, public demonstrations of increasingly advanced physical capabilities and certified sporting results in official competitions; on the other, episodes of malfunction or poor predictability of the systems when they are not under the direct control of a human operator in real time, as in the case of the simulated fight between Unitree’s two G1 robots.