The first China International Robotics Debate Competition held its semifinals in the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, also known as Beijing ETown, on Sunday, with four teams advancing to the final round.

The semifinals adopted a cross-team human vs. machine challenge. Based on the results of a random draw, each of the 10 advancing teams sent their robots to debate against humans from other teams.

The judges did not evaluate the debates based on winning or losing. Instead, they scored the robots across five dimensions: logical reasoning, language proficiency, multimodal interaction, skill demonstration, and adaptability. This approach serves as a comprehensive test of the robots' large model training and hardware calibration, the organizers said.

The winners of the semifinals will join the final competition on Nov 9.