Last April, shared news from Beijing’s robot half-marathon, which I charitably called “not a resounding success” for the machines. Out of 21 entrants, only 6 managed to finish, and that was with a lot of assistance. It also took 2 hours and 40 minutes, quite a slow pace.
Just one year later, the results are markedly different. More than 100 robots entered, and several of them from Chinese smartphone maker Honor ran the race at a faster-than-human pace. The men’s world record is currently 57:20, and it’s not likely to drop by much more. For the robots, the autonomous winner finished in 50:26, while a remote-controlled robot managed 48:19.
All is not lost, however. Here’s a look at just two of the robots during the race:
We may be slower, but humans clearly still hold an edge in the all important category of “not looking ridiculous while running”.
