The 2nd World Humanoid Robot Games, held at Beijing's National Speed Skating Oval, also known as the "Ice Ribbon," opened yesterday with a significant technological backbone. China Unicom Beijing and Huawei have deployed a 5G-A GigaUplink network to support the event, marking a milestone in the integration of advanced connectivity with robotics and embodied AI. This deployment not only ensures seamless operations for the games but also lays the groundwork for humanoid robots to venture into everyday life.
This year's games have expanded dramatically, featuring 1,301 competitions across 51 events, with 2,056 humanoid robots from 666 teams worldwide. The event count nearly doubled from 26 in the inaugural games, introducing high-intensity head-to-head events like table tennis and kickboxing. Scenario-based competitions now include real-world settings such as industrial production, hotels, homes, and logistics, with dance events emphasizing synchronized multi-robot movements. These autonomous and complex tasks demand a network capable of high-capacity uplink, millisecond-level responsiveness, and high reliability for real-time telemetry, precise control signaling, and multi-robot coordination.
To meet these stringent requirements, China Unicom Beijing and Huawei deployed a dedicated 100 MHz network, complemented by a 300 MHz LampSite ultra-wideband indoor network. This setup supports real-time robot telemetry and precise signaling. A dedicated 5QI 7 slice combined with carrier isolation ensures end-to-end latency remains within 30 milliseconds, enabling millisecond-level decision-making and response. This precision is crucial for multi-robot coordination, obstacle avoidance, and fine-motion control.
The integration of the dedicated network with BeiDou RTK (Real-Time Kinematic) positioning delivers decimeter- to sub-decimeter-level accuracy, facilitating autonomous navigation and agile obstacle avoidance in complex environments. On-site tests recorded a peak uplink speed of 1 Gbps and an average latency below 30 milliseconds.
Beyond robot connectivity, China Unicom has prioritized spectator experience. The network dynamically adjusts resources and service assurance policies based on event phases—admission, waiting, competition, and departure. Core services like instant messaging, ticket inquiries, QR-code admission, and mobile payments are prioritized, while also accommodating data-intensive activities such as photo uploads, short-video sharing, and live streaming. This ensures spectators remain connected and can share highlights in real time even during peak traffic.
On the operational front, China Unicom has developed the country's first embodied AI robot management platform for event scenarios. Each robot is assigned a unique network ID, allowing staff to monitor its location, competition status, and operational metrics in real time, creating a closed-loop management system.
Yang Lifan, Deputy General Manager of China Unicom Beijing, emphasized the significance of this deployment: "This network deployment is not only a real-world test of China Unicom's network capabilities; it will also help us accumulate valuable network assurance experience for the large-scale deployment of embodied AI. China Unicom will continue to build on the experience gained through the 5G Capital initiative and turn technological innovation into tangible and replicable network capabilities for the Mobile AI era."
David Li, President of Huawei's Wireless TDD Product Line, added: "The 2nd World Humanoid Robot Games have provided a compelling real-world validation of the 5G-A 100 MHz GigaUplink network based on 3.5 GHz 2CC + 2.1 GHz SUL for embodied AI scenarios. Looking ahead, Huawei will continue to work with China Unicom Beijing to strengthen uplink capabilities and advance spectrum coordination, building multidimensional network capabilities with tiered and differentiated service assurance for multimodal device-to-cloud transmission."
This collaboration underscores that networks are about more than speed; low latency, high reliability, and ubiquitous coverage are equally vital. With these capabilities, the 5G Capital initiative continues to expand the boundaries of network performance, laying a solid foundation for the Mobile AI era and enabling an intelligent future.
