Winners emerge from robot mountain-climbing contest in Mount Tai

Winners emerged Monday in the world's first embodied-intelligence robot mountain climbing competition, after robots climbed thousands of stone steps along a historic path of Mount Tai, Tai'an City, east China’s Shandong Province.

The inaugural China Media Group (CMG) World Robot Mount Tai Climbing Competition brought together nearly 90 teams to compete in categories, including humanoid robot racing, legged robot racing, load carrying, exoskeleton assistance and an all-terrain exploration task.

Beijing Lingyi Technology, a subsidiary of industry giant Unitree, completed the course in 43 minutes and 41 seconds to win the four-legged speed category. Beijing-based Zhishen Lingyue took first place in the humanoid robot speed race at 27 minutes and 26 seconds. Shenzhen-based LinxAI won the foot-style robot weightlifting competition in 1 hour 51 minutes and 29 seconds.

The race course spans 3.9 kilometers and more than 3,100 steps, with a cumulative elevation gain of about 600 meters and sections featuring continuous stairs and steep, winding slopes—a punishing test of balance, motor endurance, and battery life.

Organizers called Mount Tai, a site of worship for at least 3,000 years and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a "natural extreme testing ground" that could help train robots for real-world use.

"Through this competition, we have gained a much clearer understanding of our upper limits in terms of robot joints, motor endurance and actual load-bearing capacity. This experience has offered valuable insights for our future strategic adjustments and specific improvements within our target application domains and will help us achieve a significant leap forward," said Li Jinxiang, one team leader.

The population of captive giant pandas in China has reached 830, with continued improvements in population genetic diversity, according to data released Tuesday at the 2026 Global Panda Partners Conference in Chengdu, the capital city of southwest China's Sichuan Province.

In recent years, ecological corridor projects have reconnected 13 panda populations into the broader family, significantly boosting habitat connectivity.

More than 150 activities of giant pandas and other wildlife have been recorded within the corridor areas, showing interactions and breeding activities among wild populations increasingly common.

As an endemic flagship species for China and a global icon for biodiversity preservation, the giant panda remains a major draw worldwide, attracting more than one billion visitors.