An international photography exhibition opened on Saturday in Zhuhai City, south China's Guangdong Province, showcasing outstanding works from home and abroad.
The 19th China International Photographic Art Exhibition features 276 selected works from over 20,000 photographers representing 123 countries and regions, according to organizers.
Over 340,000 photos have been submitted, surpassing the total from previous editions.
Alongside the main exhibit, special displays commemorate the 60th anniversary of the establishment of China-France diplomatic relations and offer insights into life in Iran. Another side event highlights the achievements made by Guangdong and Zhuhai in the new era.
"I see China very much as a leader in leading the collection of great photography, bringing together photographers nationally and also internationally. I think this is very unique with what I've seen around the world," said Brian Smith, a member of the Professional Photographers of Canada and the Lower Mainland regional chair for the Professional Photographers of Canada-BC.
"The quality of the photos is outstanding. The event held in Zhuhai offers a great opportunity for Macao photographers to learn," said Guo Jingwen, Chairman of the General Assembly of the Macao Photographic Society.
"Photography, which conveys a thousand words in a single image, is the best way to tell Chinese stories to the world," said Jing Weidong, Secretary General of the China Folklore Photographic Association.
At the opening ceremony of the exhibition, six selected photography routes and 31 scenic spots across Zhuhai were unveiled, hoping to attract more photography enthusiasts to capture the beauty of the city and the wider Greater Bay Area.
"I think Zhuhai's internationally recognized achievements provide us photographers with various subjects to explore. I will continue to use Zhuhai as my focus and tell the story of Zhuhai to the world in the form of photography art in the future," said Zhu Ruisheng, Vice Chairman of the Zhuhai Photographers Association.
The event, a collaboration between the China Photographers Association, the federation of literary and art circles of Guangdong and the Zhuhai municipal government, will run until Feb 16, 2025.
The exhibition was first held in 1981.
Int'l photo exhibition opens in China's Guangdong
Honor's humanoid robot, Lightning, which swept the 2026 Beijing E-Town Humanoid Robot Half-Marathon on Sunday, is a natural extension of years of accumulation in consumer electronics technology, said its developers.
A leading smart device provider in China, Honor independently developed the model, which dominated the podium at the event as it was used by all three teams whose autonomous navigating robots ran the fastest times.
At the Honor factory in Pingshan District in Shenzhen City, south China's Guangdong Province, where robotics engineers developed Lightning. They said the robot's body design incorporates a simulation system that, through artificial intelligence algorithms, can iterate nearly 30,000 design schemes of varying sizes over three months. Complete and mature systems are also in place for battery, communication, and reliability verification.
"We built a simulation lab from scratch. For the robots, we digitize the entire design and put it into a computer. We have our own material library, which can meet the force, thermal, and chemical property demands for each component, under different environments and speeds. We've accumulated about 1000 kinds of materials. For example, if there's a risk with the robot's neck, we just need to change the material code from 001 to 002. Now, through our simulations, we only need one day to perform parallel calculations on 10 different designs, before creating a mold and verifying it in the lab," said Li Zheng, a senior engineer at Honor.
An autonomous robot capable of completing a half-marathon involves a complete industry chain, with core components including high-precision sensors, LiDAR, motors, operating systems, and control algorithms. The development of robotic marathoners have driven an increasing number of component enterprises to get involved.
Manifold, a tech firm established by newly-graduated PhDs, has developed a 3D spatial memory module, which can model an environment in real time and transform it into images that robots can understand. They said several robots running the half-marathon this year adopted their solution.
"Our device can operate within a one-kilometer tunnel with an error margin of only tens of centimeters. For robots, especially in the absence of GPS, this allows them to accurately determine their location. The underlying technology is a multi-sensor fusion technology that we developed in-house," said Qin Youming, CEO and founder of Manifold.
The Beijing Humanoid Robotics Innovation Center set up a training camp for the marathon event. Many university students came a month ahead of the event to develop and debug their technologies and algorithms based on open-source robot bodies, databases, and training platforms.
"These high-quality databases and highly open-source control algorithms are actually very helpful to us. We no longer need to build the house from the ground up, but can skip the most basic part," said Sun Jingyu, a student from Shandong University.
"Through this racing event, I believe we can make our robots more reliable and stable, while also supporting high-dynamic, high-load movements. This is crucial for robots' future application in both industrial, commercial and domestic scenarios," said Guo Yijie, head of the innovative humanoid department and the Marathon project of Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center.
Engineers share development story behind Beijing humanoid half-marathon champion model
