Hitch Open 2026 season kicks off on the F1 track, featuring a new robot table tennis challenge

(Source: Shangguan News)

Hitch Open World AI Racing Championship 2026 Season launched yesterday at the Shanghai F1 Circuit, promoting breakthrough developments in autonomous driving, embodied intelligence, and robotics through extreme competitions in real environments.

Hitch Open is a leading global physical intelligence competition platform dedicated to solving the core challenge of artificial intelligence: how to enable machine systems to progress from perception to decision-making and precise action in complex, unpredictable real-world environments. If virtual AI still deals with bits, then Hitch Open’s arena is the battlefield of atoms.

This season, a brand-new event—the Robot Ping-Pong Challenge—made its debut. This competition focuses on the performance of humanoid robots in high-speed dynamic scenarios, requiring robots to perform real-time perception, motion planning, and autonomous decision-making within milliseconds. The event showcased the impressive performance of “Hitter,” a robot autonomous decision-making ping-pong project developed by the University of California, Berkeley.

Hitch Open’s iconic feature—the Tianmen Mountain Ninety-Nine Turns—will once again become the ultimate arena for AI autonomous racing in June 2026. Facing rugged mountain roads and changing natural climates, participating AI must chase the fastest challenge record of 7 minutes and 38 seconds left by human racers, all without boundary constraints and safety limits. At the launch event, Hitch Open issued the “Tianmen Mountain Hero Invitation” to global automotive and robotics industry partners, inviting top algorithms worldwide to compete fiercely in the real world.

The explosion of physical intelligence is not a solo effort but an ecological convergence. Hitch Open held signing ceremonies with multiple industry partners to promote innovation in autonomous driving and embodied intelligence in real-world scenarios, including Shanghai International Automotive City (Group) Co., Ltd., Zhiyuan Robotics, JunYao Group, Lingxin Qiaoshou, Hui’er Intelligent, and Vtron Artificial Intelligence Research Institute.

This collaboration covers key industry segments such as autonomous driving chassis platforms, universal robot systems, dexterous hand technology, and AI computing platforms, marking Hitch Open’s efforts to build a physical intelligence ecosystem network for real-world applications. It aims to provide an open testing ground and innovation platform to transition autonomous driving and embodied intelligence technologies from labs to large-scale deployment.

Original Title: “Hitch Open 2026 Season Launches at F1 Circuit with New Robot Ping-Pong Challenge”

Column Editor: Qiu Yingqiong

Source: Author: Xinmin Evening News Ye Wei

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