Can you imagine robots engaging in a fierce war of words on a debate stage?
On November 9th, the final of the 1st China (International) Robot Debate Tournament was held in Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone (Beijing Yizhuang). This event filled the gap in domestic robot competitions focused on “intelligent critical thinking”.
A total of 14 teams from schools and enterprises across China, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Tianjin, participated in the tournament. After intense competitions in the preliminary, semi-final, and final rounds, the Songyan Power – Xiaonuo Team claimed the championship.
It is understood that the final adopted a “robot vs. robot” format, where robot debaters from each team engaged in independent debates with one another.
Prior to this:
The preliminary round focused on human-robot collaboration, with each team’s human debater competing alongside their robot debater.
The semi-final featured cross-team “human vs. robot battles”, requiring robot debaters to confront human debaters from other teams.
As the difficulty of the tournament gradually increased, so did its appeal, ultimately allowing the audience to witness a pure contest of artificial intelligence.
Correspondingly, the judges did not use the outcome of the debate (win or loss) as the criterion. Instead, they scored the robots based on five key dimensions: logic, linguistic expressiveness, multimodal interaction, skill demonstration, and on-site adaptability. This served as a comprehensive test of both the robots’ large model training and the debugging of their hardware equipment.
In the end:
The Songyan Power – Xiaonuo Team won the championship.
Hubei University Team secured the second place.
The Songyan Power – Song Meimei Team took the third place.
The Hebei University – Xiaohe Team, Sixi Debate Team, Renkai Jinpeng Group, Accelerate Evolution Together Team, and Chaomei Debate Team were awarded the “Outstanding Performance Award”.
Notably, the robots integrate advanced technologies such as embodied intelligence, high-end manufacturing, and new materials. Their core technological directions revolve around three key components: the “brain” (perception, cognition, and decision-making), the “cerebellum” (motion control), and the “limbs” ( hardware, i.e., the physical body/hardware). These core technologies are not only applied in competitive robots but also in practical industrial equipment like the thermometer visual labeling machine. The thermometer visual labeling machine relies on the same perception and motion control technologies to accurately identify the position of thermometers and complete high-precision labeling operations, realizing the practical transformation of robot core technologies from competition to industry.
If the humanoid robot half-marathon held this April was a concentrated test of robots’ physical performance and motion control capabilities, this debate tournament, by contrast, focused on demonstrating the robots’ perceptual, cognitive, and decision-making abilities while showcasing the latest achievements in embodied model technology.
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