Beijing’s robotic half-marathon is again for its second 12 months with far much less embarassing outcomes

To make up for an extremely laughable inaugural event, Beijing is working again its humanoid robotic half-marathon. Thankfully, the occasion that pits humanoid robots made by Chinese language firms in opposition to one another throughout 13 miles went quite a bit smoother this 12 months.

This 12 months’s half-marathon hosted greater than 100 rivals, with first place going to Honor, higher recognized for its smartphones, and its red-clad robotic named Lightning. Dwelling as much as the title, the gold medalist completed the race in 50 minutes and 26 seconds. That is a number of minutes sooner than the human file that was lately set by Uganda’s Jacob Kiplimo final month.

Honor swept the opposite podium spots, with the vital caveat that all of them navigated the course autonomously, in response to the state-sponsored tv information company CCTV. That is a large enchancment over final 12 months, the place the quickest time amongst 21 robots was achieved by Tiangong Extremely with a file of two hours and 40 minutes. Final 12 months’s occasion noticed most of the bipedal robots receiving help from human operators who ran alongside them, in addition to some comical mishaps, like falling on the beginning line.

Nonetheless, the BBC reported that round 40 p.c of the robots competed autonomously this 12 months, whereas the remaining have been remote-controlled. Regardless of the fast enhancements, this 12 months’s occasion nonetheless had its fair share of crashes, even from Honor’s robots.