Running Is Only the Entry Ticket: What Will Robots Compete on Next?

Gordon Cheng, a professor of cognitive systems at the Technical University of Munich, once spent five years building a humanoid robot for neuroscience research. That painstaking process gave him a stark benchmark for how far the field has come.

At the recent World Robot Conference in Beijing, Cheng was struck by a nearby factory that can assemble a complete humanoid robot in just 15 minutes. The contrast between his early marathon and today's assembly-line sprint underscores a dramatic shift in manufacturing capability.

Beyond production speed, the pace of robot learning is also accelerating rapidly. Cheng noted that robots are now acquiring skills far faster than before, suggesting that the next competitive frontier may lie in intelligence and adaptability—not just hardware or speed—as the industry moves beyond basic locomotion.