DgcityThe stone pilgrim’s path up Mount Tai has felt emperors’ sandals, porters’ shoulder poles and millions of tourists’ sneakers, but on Monday it met something new: nearly 90 teams of robots trying to climb it. Humanoids, four-legged machines and exoskeleton-wearing runners set off from the Red Gate at dawn for the first World Robot Mount Tai Climbing Competition, turning one of China’s sacred peaks into a very public test track.
The course is cruel for a machine. The full route runs 3.9 kilometres up 3,100 uneven stone steps, gaining 600 metres of elevation through steep ramps, worn stairways and tight bends. Humanoid robots ran a shorter 1.6-kilometre race over more than 600 steps, while quadruped machines also competed in a load-carrying event that asked them to move fragile goods — fresh eggs, watermelons and supplies — the way Mount Tai’s human porters have done for centuries.
The cameras caught the honest parts of the experiment. One bandana-wearing humanoid collapsed in a heap on the cobbles and waited for its engineers to scoop it up. Another toppled down a flight of steps and came to rest beside a rubbish bin. Steadier machines picked their way past cheering pilgrims as autumn mist hung over the pines.
A four-legged Unitree A2 from Beijing Lingyi Technology reached the halfway gate at Zhongtianmen in 43 minutes 41 seconds, well under the two hours most hikers need, to win the quadruped speed race. The Yinyi NE01 humanoid took the humanoid event in 27 minutes 26 seconds, and a load-carrying quadruped finished with its cargo intact after nearly two hours on the stairs.
Organisers from China Media Group called Mount Tai a natural extreme testing ground, arguing that irregular, weathered steps reveal balance and navigation problems that a clean laboratory floor never will. For one morning, pilgrims got an unusual sight: the ancient mountain, and the machines, slowly learning each other.
Engineers shadowed nearly every machine with tablets in hand, and the crowd quickly learned to read the different dramas: a quadruped pausing to replant a hoof on a slick edge, a humanoid’s shoulder motors whirring as it leaned into a steep flight, a whole team holding its breath while a watermelon tilted in its basket. Tourists on an ordinary autumn pilgrimage stepped aside to let the robots claim the middle of the stairs, then broke into applause when a machine cleared a landing.
