The World Humanoid Robot Games, a first time event hosted by the Beijing government, kicked off with a tech presentation that left everyone speechless. Unitree Robotics, a Chinese startup that is leading the charge in humanoid and quadruped robot research, stole the show with their 100-meter dash entry.
Allen Pan, a YouTube engineer with a love for retro projects, built an auto-trick skateboard for Activision’s Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 promotion. This clever board automates tricks like kickflips so beginners can feel like pros.
Two tennis players, Jamie Murray and Laura Robson, strapped to the roofs of SUVs tearing down a runway, hitting a tennis ball back and forth isn’t something you ever expect to see, but this was the stunt Lexus pulled off to get two Guinness World Records. They called it “Served at Speed,” and turned Duxford Airfield, a place usually home to old planes, into a wild tennis court for a day.
In Beijing’s Yizhuang Development Zone, four teams of humanoid robots duked it out in the world’s first fully autonomous 3-on-3 soccer (football) showdown, hosted by the ROBO League. Tsinghua University’s THU Robotics squad stole the show, outscoring China Agricultural University’s Mountain Sea team 5-3 in a final that was nothing short of a tech breakthrough.
Arcade games have a habit for whisking us back to carefree days. For anyone who remembers pounding away at boxer machines, testing their punch on a cushioned target, a fresh challenger has stepped up to test a different kind of might: the Decopin Buster. This bizarre Japanese invention trades fists for fingertips, daring players to flick a target with enough zing to score big.
Skateboarding icon Tony Hawk, who’s been flipping gravity the bird since the ‘80s, is now shredding the audio scene with a killer collab. Skullcandy, the brand that’s all about raw, street-ready sound, has joined forces with Bose to drop the METHOD 360 ANC earbuds, and Hawk’s hyping them as the real deal, calling them “legit – affordably killer sound.”
Peng Yujiang, a 55-year-old paraglider with five years of experience, set out to test a second-hand harness in China’s Qilian Mountains. He wasn’t planning to fly—just shake out the gear at 10,000 feet above sea level. But nature had other plans. A freak updraft, known as a “cloud suck,” grabbed him and hurled him skyward, launching an ordeal that would see him soar to 28,208 feet—higher than most commercial flights and just shy of Mount Everest’s 29,029-foot summit. Thanks to a camera strapped to his glider, the world got a front-row seat to his movie-like survival story.
Photo credit: Boost Treadmills LLC
Running can feel like wrestling gravity itself, every stride a gritty deal with the ground, especially if you’re nursing an injury or fighting mobility woes. The Boost 2 microgravity treadmill laughs in the face of physics, letting you jog with just a sliver of your body weight, and it’s no mere gym toy—it’s a straight-up NASA brainchild, cooked up to keep astronauts fit in the weightless expanse of space.
Four Unitree G1 robots, each controlled remotely by human operators, squared off in a tournament-style brawl dubbed “Unitree Iron Fist King: Awakening!” The format was straightforward: three two-minute rounds, with points scored for strikes—one for a hand hit, three for a leg strike. Knockdowns or failure to recover within eight seconds carried penalties. The event unfolded in Hangzhou, near Unitree’s shiny new 10,000-square-meter factory, and it was as much a test of tech as it was a crowd-pleaser.
The Los Angeles Chargers have once again stolen the NFL’s social media spotlight with a schedule release video that’s less a sports announcement and more a pixelated masterpiece crafted in the blocky sandbox of Minecraft. This nearly five-minute romp through a voxel-based gridiron is a love letter to both gamers and football fans, blending the Chargers’ signature wit with enough Easter eggs to make even the most dedicated Creeper hunter jealous.