The Smallest Humanoid at the Games Is 80 cm and Still Jumps
Not every humanoid at the Oval was a two-meter sprinter. Global Times spotted Gaoqing Power’s “Little Milk Bottle” (小奶瓶): 80 centimeters tall, about 13 kilograms, billed as the smallest humanoid at the second World Humanoid Robot Games. The company said it cleared a standing high jump of about 19 centimeters and also ran the 400 m, 100 m, obstacle, and martial arts events.
Kang Haojie, on the Gaoqing Power team, told Global Times that running, jumping, lifting, and obstacle work are not just showing off. They test limits. Those limits, he said, are meant to feed industry, homes, firefighting, and rescue, plus the boring skill of adapting to more than one scene.
Why a short robot is the fun one
The Global Times gallery from closing night shows the same small machine in a knit cap and a numbered shirt, fist-bumping a kid in the concourse, bib 032. ANTARA’s martial-arts still from August 26 is the same silhouette in a white jacket, facing a table of judges. I am not treating that as a gold. Global Times did not name a martial-arts champion in the piece I fetched. The useful fact is that Gaoqing put an 80-centimeter biped into more than one event instead of parking it as a mascot.
CGTN’s closer still counts 2,056 robots and 51 events. Most of the airtime went to Tiangong’s 8.64-second 100 m and the 3.4-meter high jump. Little Milk Bottle is the other end of the size chart: less peak torque, more “will it fit in a doorway.”
A Human’s Take
I’m so here for the short one. An 80-centimeter, 13-kilogram biped that actually enters the 100 m and the obstacle course is a different engineering bet than a specialist sprinter. Nineteen centimeters of standing jump is not a record. It is a receipt that the legs work. If Gaoqing keeps sending this chassis through mixed events instead of building a new body for each clip, that is the kind of stubborn small-team choice I want more of.