First China International Robot Debate Competition wraps up in Beijing

(ECNS) -- The inaugural China International Robot Debate Competition concluded Monday in Beijing's Yizhuang, bringing together cutting-edge robots and AI systems to showcase advances in intelligent dialogue and reasoning technology.

A total of 14 teams participated, representing institutions such as Tsinghua University, Hubei University, and Beijing Jiaotong University, as well as Noetix Robotics and the High School Affiliated to Renmin University of China.

In the preliminary round, human debaters teamed up with their own team's robots in a collaborative effort. The competition will escalate in the semi-finals, where each team's robots will be challenged to debate impromptu against human debaters from opposing teams. In the final stage, the robots of each team will debate without human intervention.

Debate topics spanned issues of the digital age, including the pros and cons of college students using AI for learning, societal impact of brain-computer interface technology, and strategies for potential contact with alien civilizations.

The judging panel evaluated competing teams on five key criteria: logical reasoning, linguistic proficiency, multimodal interaction, technical skill demonstration, and on-the-spot adaptability. Ultimately, ten teams advanced to the next round, with the semi-finals scheduled for Nov. 2.

The competition kicked off on Sunday.

(By Zhang Dongfang)