Developers made careful preparations for the inaugural China Media Group (CMG) World Robot Mount Tai Challenge in Tai'an, east China's Shandong Province, enabling their robots to navigate the demanding course and underscoring how real-world testing is accelerating progress in embodied intelligence.
The event was held on Monday, bringing together nearly 90 teams for the competition, which was divided into speed races and specialized events, with five events in total across robot forms including humanoid, quadruped and exoskeleton.
Competitors tackled the 3.9-km ancient stone route from Hongmen to Zhongtianmen, climbing more than 3,100 steps with an elevation gain of nearly 640 meters, while the morning mist and moss on the stones added to the difficulty.
At Shandong University's VSISLab, student Li Zhongzheng was looking forward to a good result in the race with advanced robots.
"This is a robot we built for a competition. We used a Unitree G1 robot, plus a depth camera," Li said.
He said the most urgent task before the contest was getting the robot into shoes.
"The terrain at Mount Tai is quite complex -- it includes uphill and downhill slopes, stairs going up and down, and a series of slippery wet surfaces," Li said.
The team from Beijing Lingyi Technology, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hangzhou-based Unitree Robotics, had to work out how to carry its cargo without tipping the robot over.
"We need to transport 4 boxes of bottled water, 4 boxes of instant noodles, and 4 thermos flasks. But if we add the thermos flasks on top, it would raise the robot's center of gravity too high, and with too high a center of gravity it would get pulled down. We made this cloth bag mainly to insert the thermos flasks in from the side, so that we can lower the center of gravity as much as possible," said Chen Xiyun, head of the team.
Su Qingwei, chief judge of the competition, said the terrain posed challenges beyond those of a typical robot contest.
"The terrain is more challenging than what robots normally encounter in competitions. There are steps of different heights and widths, as well as flat stone paths and cobblestone paths. The robots have to adapt to all these different conditions," Su said.
As software matters as much as hardware, Chen said the team adjusted the robot dog's gait so that it walked lower than usual, which helped it handle the steeper stretches.
"We adjusted the robot dog's walking posture through software. As you can see, its walking posture is now lower than usual. By lowering its center of gravity while walking, it can handle those relatively steep surfaces as well as possible," Chen said.
Robot makers brace for extreme terrain in Mount Tai climbing contest
China's Fujian aircraft carrier has completed its cross-sea area test training over the past year, transforming from initial to full combat capability, said a Chinese military affairs expert.
On June 17, 2022, the Fujian was launched and named with hull number 18, making China one of the few countries in the world capable of building large aircraft carriers. On November 5, 2025, the Fujian held its commissioning and flag-presentation ceremony at a naval port in Sanya. Just 13 days after commissioning, the Fujian carrier strike group conducted its first live-force training at sea. The year of 2026 is a critical year for the carrier's full transition from initial operational capability to full operational capability.
"'Initially forming combat capability' means the Fujian carrier can sail normally, the carrier-based aircraft can take off and land on the deck, and it can conduct basic formation training with escort vessels. 'Fully forming combat capability' means raising it from 'being able to sail, take off and land, and fight limited wars' to 'being able to fight high-intensity, all-weather, systematic and sustainable wars,'" said Zhang Junshe, a military affairs expert.
"Within one year of its commissioning, the Fujian carrier sailed south through the Taiwan Strait to the South China Sea and then north to the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea, completing cross-sea area test training. This demonstrates that the carrier has acquired the ability to operate in distant seas across different sea areas, with escort ship coordination reaching a certain level and combat capability initially formed," said Zhang.
"Within the same year, the Fujian completed catapult takeoffs and landings of multiple types of carrier-based aircraft, initially gaining full-deck operating capability. It then conducted live-troop formation training and multiple cross-sea area maneuvers. Coordination among formation escort ships has reached a certain level, and the carrier has developed an initial capability to conduct combat operations," he said.
As the world's first aircraft carrier using conventional-power electromagnetic catapult technology, the Fujian's electromagnetic catapult system, unlike the ski-jump takeoff of the Liaoning and Shandong, allows the carrier to flexibly organize the takeoff of different aircraft types, including the J-35 stealth fighter, J-15T heavy fighter and KJ-600 fixed-wing early warning aircraft.
"The Fujian is equipped with electromagnetic catapults and electromagnetic arresting devices. This is the carrier's most core and most watched technical highlight. Compared with traditional takeoff methods, electromagnetic catapult brings many changes to carrier aircraft sortie rates and formation operations. In the future, carrier-based drones can be deployed on board, and the carrier formation can conduct manned-unmanned coordinated operations," said Zhang.
The Fujian's commissioning in November 2025 marked the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy's entry into the three-carrier era. Over the past year, the PLA Navy has accelerated its transformation, with the three-carrier system as a hallmark.
"The real significance of the three-carrier era is not in having them appear together, but in rotation. Rotation means the three carriers cycle in an orderly way among the three states of 'duty-training-maintenance.' The three carriers strongly advance the PLA Navy's strategic transformation from 'near-sea defense' to 'far-sea defense,' with far-sea operations entering a new stage of normalized and systematic deployment. The Navy will continue to undertake far-sea missions such as escort, evacuation of overseas Chinese and humanitarian rescue, effectively safeguarding national interests and fulfilling the responsibilities and obligations of a responsible major country," said Zhang.
China's aircraft carrier Fujian transforming from initial to full combat capability: expert
