The 2nd World Humanoid Robot Games, which opened yesterday at Beijing's National Speed Skating Oval, known as the "Ice Ribbon," are showcasing a new benchmark in connectivity for robotics and embodied AI. China Unicom Beijing and Huawei have built an integrated digital foundation powered by a 5G-A GigaUplink network, designed to support intelligent event operations, robot competition, and spectator experiences. This deployment also lays a connectivity foundation for humanoid robots to move beyond the arena and into everyday life, according to a press release.
The Games feature significant upgrades in scale and competition design. This year, 2,056 humanoid robots from 666 teams worldwide will compete in 1,301 competitions across 51 events. The number of events has nearly doubled from 26 in the inaugural Games, with new high-intensity head-to-head events such as table tennis and kickboxing. Scenario-based competitions have expanded into real-world settings including industrial production, hotels, homes, and logistics, while dance events now emphasize synchronized movement across multiple robots. These more autonomous competition formats and higher task complexity demand networks with high-capacity uplink, millisecond-level responsiveness, and high reliability, supporting real-time robot telemetry, precise control signaling, and multi-robot coordination.
To meet these 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 exchange. A dedicated 5QI 7 slice combined with carrier isolation keeps end-to-end latency for humanoid robots within 30 milliseconds, enabling millisecond-level decision-making and response, and helping ensure precision in multi-robot coordination, obstacle avoidance, and fine-motion control.
By integrating the dedicated network with BeiDou RTK (Real-Time Kinematic) positioning, the solution delivers decimeter- to sub-decimeter-level positioning accuracy, supporting autonomous navigation, agile obstacle avoidance, and precision racing in complex environments. On-site tests recorded a peak uplink speed of 1 Gbps, with average latency below 30 milliseconds.
While safeguarding mission-critical connectivity for the robots, China Unicom has also prioritized the network experience of on-site spectators. To address high-density, heavy-traffic demands, network resources and service assurance policies are dynamically adjusted according to different phases and areas of the event, including admission, waiting, competition, and departure. Core services such as instant messaging, ticket inquiries, QR-code admission, and mobile payments are prioritized for stable access, while the network also accommodates data-intensive services like photo uploads, short-video sharing, and live streaming. This allows spectators to stay connected and share highlights in real time even during peak traffic periods.
On the operations side, China Unicom has developed China's first embodied AI robot management platform designed for event scenarios. Through a unique network ID assigned to each robot, event staff can monitor its location within the venue, competition status, and operational metrics in real time, creating a closed-loop operations and management system.
Yang Lifan, Deputy General Manager of China Unicom Beijing, said: "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, said: "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 deployment underscores the importance of low latency, high reliability, and ubiquitous coverage, not just speed. It advances the 5G Capital initiative and lays a solid foundation for the Mobile AI era, enabling real-time interaction and precise control across a wide range of embodied AI scenarios.
