A bunch of robots just finished a half-marathon faster than the world’s best human runners.
The winning machine crossed the line in just 50 mins and 26 secs which is quicker than the official world record for a human half-marathon, which was set last month.
More than 100 robot teams took part this year. Several of them finished more than 10 minutes ahead of the human winners.
The first robot half-marathon in 2024 did not go very well. Most robots failed to finish and the winner that year took 2 hours and 40 minutes. That is more than double the time of the human champion back then.
This year, almost half of the robots navigated the course on their own. No remote control. Last year, almost all of them needed a human to guide them.
The robots and 12,000 human runners used separate tracks so they would not run into each other.
The robot that won is from Chinese smartphone brand HONOR. The design copies how top human runners move. The machine also uses liquid cooling, the same technology found in HONOR’s phones.
An engineer on the winning team named Du Xiaodi said the point is not just to win races. He explained that building a faster runner helps improve other things too, like making machines more reliable and keeping them cool. He said humanoid robots will eventually change industries such as manufacturing, but he also admitted the technology is still young.
As impressive as this is, running well does not mean these robots can already work in a factory. Real industrial jobs require hand skills, the ability to understand a messy real-world environment, and more than just repeating one small task.
Chinese robot companies are still having a hard time building the AI software needed to make their machines work as well as human factory workers.
Source: Reuters