Human-in-the-loop

When people say a robot is “human-in-the-loop”, they mean a person is still inside the chain of decisions. The machine handles the tricky physical bits, like staying upright, but a human picks what it does next.

The televised robot fights in China work this way. An operator presses a button for a kick, and the robot works out how to throw that kick without falling over.

At the 2026 World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, kickboxing allowed a human in the loop. The sprint races did not: those robots had to run with nobody steering.