It’s Marathon Monday here in Boston, and thus a fine time to check in on Beijing’s robot half-marathon first noted back in January, which has now taken place. The event was not a resounding success for the robots. For example, while humans sometimes collapse at the finish line of a race, here’s one robot entrant at the starting line:
21 teams entered a robot, but only 6 managed to complete the race. Even those robots that did complete 13.1 miles still took advantage of some helpful accommodations:
…robot contestants were allowed to get new batteries during the race. Companies were also allowed to swap their androids with substitutes when they could no longer compete, though each substitution came with a 10-minute penalty.
The winning robot, Tiangong Ultra, took 2 hours and 40 minutes to complete its run, which seems to put it in about the bottom 20% or so of all human finishers.1 While advancements are certain in the future, human records and even most hobbyist PRs are safe for the time being.
Footnotes:
That page is a bit confused, and perhaps shows only results for males? Though it asks for details like age and gender, the results are always the same.
Whatever the case, it’s fair to say 2:40 is not a very fast half-marathon. ↩︎
