Table tennis is the ultimate test of a humanoid robot's speed, adaptability and sustained real-time decision-making. HOPE examines dynamic balance, high-speed motion control, real-time autonomous decisions and scene generalization in a single arena. It marks embodied AI's key leap from merely moving to competing and winning, backed by a quantifiable, reproducible open validation system.
AGIBOT A3 humanoid closes the full loop independently
From its global debut at WAIC to an official event at the World Humanoid Robot Games, HOPE went from exhibition to sanctioned competition in a single season.
At WAIC 2026, Hitch Open presented the AI autonomous-decision robot table-tennis exhibition, the first public showing of physical AI perceiving, deciding and executing in real athletic competition.
HOPE ran as an official competition event of the 2nd World Humanoid Robot Games at the National Speed Skating Oval, known as the “Ice Ribbon.” Twelve university and research teams competed on identical AGIBOT A3 robots, with no teleoperation and no cloud brains.
12 leading universities and research institutes on one stage
UC Berkeley
Tsinghua University
Peking University
Fudan University
Shanghai Jiao Tong University
USTC
University of Hong Kong
Shenzhen University
Beijing Information Science & Technology University
BAAI
Shanghai Innovation Institute
TeleAI, China Telecom
Inaugural HOPE AI Challenge · 2nd World Humanoid Robot Games · August 2026
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