The winning runner in the Beijing Half Marathon for Humanoid Robots finished the race today in 50 minutes and 26 seconds. This is much faster than the human world record of 57 minutes recently set by Jacob Kiplimo.
Comparing the execution times of humans and robots may seem unfair. “My car could run faster than a cheetah,” one social media user said. Nonetheless, the winning time was a significant improvement over last year’s race, when the fastest robot finished in 2 hours and 40 minutes. (At the time, I scoffed: “That probably isn’t an impressive time for a human being.”)
The Associated Press reported that this year’s winner was made by Chinese smartphone manufacturer Honor. It looks like the winning robot wasn’t actually the fastest, as another Honor robot finished it in 48 minutes and 19 seconds. But the robot was remotely controlled. 50:26 The robot was autonomous and won due to its weighted score.
According to Beijing’s E-Town technology hub, about 40% of the participating robots competed autonomously, while the remaining 60% were remotely controlled. Not all of them were as good as Honor’s robot. One robot fell off the starting line and the other crashed into a barrier.
