How close are robots to replacing human workers?

The five-day event, staged at the National Speed Skating Oval built for the 2022 Winter Olympics, drew more than 2,000 robots from 666 teams, up from roughly 280 teams and 500 robots at last year’s inaugural edition.

Of the 51 total events, 30 borrowed from human sports; the other 21 were built to mimic paid work – connecting cables, sorting packages in a mock warehouse, charging electric vehicles, taking restaurant orders, responding to a staged emergency. Huawei, a technology partner for the games, was reported as saying more than 40% of events required robots to finish the task with no human operator standing by. 

That’s the half of the program worth an HR leader’s attention. A robot that can find a cable at an awkward angle, grip it correctly, and plug it in without knocking over the shelf next to it is solving a much harder problem than running in a straight line – and a far closer stand-in for warehouse, retail, or facilities work.

Yu Chao, chief executive of Lumos Robotics, one of the competing firms, put it bluntly: “Simply running and jumping does not improve efficiency.” Hua Rong, chief marketing officer at robotics firm Zeroth, was even more direct about what the spectacle does and doesn’t prove: “the competition will be whether, after the product is sold, it can really solve users’ problems.”