Robots Beat Human Records At Beijing Half-marathon

The winning runner astatine a Beijing half-marathon for humanoid robots vanished nan title coming successful 50 minutes and 26 seconds — importantly faster than nan quality world grounds of 57 minutes precocious group by Jacob Kiplimo.

Comparing quality and robot moving times whitethorn look unfair; 1 societal media personification observed, “my car tin outrun a cheetah too.” Still, nan winning clip is simply a monolithic betterment complete past year’s race, erstwhile the fastest robot vanished successful 2 hours and 40 minutes. (Back then, I scoffed that this “would not beryllium an awesome clip for a human.”)

The Associated Press reports that this year’s victor was built by Chinese smartphone shaper Honor. It seems nan winning robot wasn’t really nan fastest, arsenic a different Honor robot vanished successful 48 minutes and 19 seconds. But that 1 was distant controlled — nan 50:26 robot was autonomous and won owed to weighted scoring.

About 40% of participating robots competed autonomously, while nan remaining 60% were distant controlled, according to Beijing’s E-Town tech hub. Not each of them did arsenic good arsenic Honor’s robots, pinch 1 robot falling astatine nan starting statement and different hitting a barrier.