Forget the score, MWC Shanghai’s humanoid robot penalty shootout put embodied AI to the test

One of the biggest crowd-pullers at MWC Shanghai 2026 was a fully autonomous humanoid robot penalty shootout, rather than a smartphone launch or an AI keynote. Held over two days at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre, the competition drew more than 10,000 spectators as eight Chinese embodied AI teams battled through nearly 100 rounds of penalty kicks. China Mobile (Hangzhou) Information Technology, Tianshu Tanjie (Beijing) Technology, and Hangzhou Xingshu Intelligent Robot took the top t