On Mount Tai, robot dogs climbed the whole 3.9 km trail while humanoids raced 1.6 km

The first CMG World Robot Mount Tai Climb finished on Nov. 2 in Tai'an, Shandong, with nearly 90 teams, and the course told the story before the results did. A quadruped from the Beijing Lingyi Technology team climbed the full trail from Hongmen to Zhongtianmen, about 3.9 km and more than 3,100 stone steps, in 43 minutes 41 seconds. Humanoids were not sent all the way up. Their official speed leg, Hongmen Square to Doumu Palace, was about 1.6 km with more than 600 steps, Xinhua reported, and the Zhishen Lingyue team won it in 27:26.

On real mountain stairs, quadrupeds are already competing as products and humanoids are still a test. On those figures the winning dog averaged about 89 meters a minute to the humanoid's 58, on a route with about five times as many steps. Unitree, which makes both, officially entered only its A2 and B2 quadrupeds, IT之家 (IT Home) and Dianchang reported. Lingyi's winner was an A2 running fully autonomously, IT之家 said; it climbed in 41:41 and took a two-minute penalty. Unitree machines also took two silvers, one with a B2 that carried 66 kg on part of the trail. The only G1 humanoid in the race, entered by Shanghai Yongda Zhicheng rather than Unitree, overheated and was carried down on a stretcher.

The dogs also outpaced the officials. Organizers had planned one referee to follow each robot, but the legged robots wore the referees out, so they switched to referees posted along 50-to-60-meter sections, the Hong Kong outlet on.cc reported.

The strongest case for the humanoids came after their finish line. Zhishen Lingyue, a team formed by embodied-AI company Zhishen Technology and Shandong's Lingyue Intelligence, took its robot on up the optional, harder leg from Doumu Palace to Hutian Pavilion and won the "Brave Summit" award in 55:34.