China kicked off the three-day long World Humanoid Robot Games on Friday, looking to showcase its advances in artificial intelligence and robotics with 280 teams from 16 countries.

Over 500 robots competed in soccer, boxing, and running. In many cases, gravity was the real winner. This week, China’s leading robotics minds gathered in Beijing for a hotly-anticipated, Olympics-style event dubbed the world’s first “ Humanoid Robot Games. ”

The first robot Olympics has kicked off in China on Friday and brought together humanoid machines from 280 teams across 16 countries, including the US, Japan and Germany.

But the robots had other plans. During soccer matches, four mechanical players crashed into each other and collapsed in a tangled heap of metal limbs.

Some of the humanoids' sporting displays were more comical than skillful - but we might not be laughing at them for long. | ITV National News

A video (top) features some of the robots in action on the first day. A running contest, for example, shows several of the bipedal-bots racing along a track at impressive speed, although one of the competitors clearly has trouble sticking to its lane.

The World Humanoid Robot Games has just kicked off in Beijing, China after the opening ceremony on August 14. While it looks exciting and fun, it's also a pretty frightening look at our potential future robot overlords.