Humanoid robot breaks half marathon world record in Beijing

The humans were near acold down arsenic smartphone shaper Honor’s humanoid robot shattered the men’s satellite grounds successful China.

A humanoid robot competing against flesh-and-blood runners has breached the satellite grounds astatine a Beijing half-marathon, showcasing the accelerated technological advancements achieved by Chinese makers.

Spectators lined the roads successful Yizhuang successful the capital’s southbound connected Sunday to ticker the machines and their quality rivals race, each radical successful a abstracted lane to debar accidents oregon collisions.

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Some of the robots were highly agile, moving similar celebrated runners specified arsenic Usain Bolt, portion others had much basal capabilities.

The winning humanoid, equipped with an autonomous navigation strategy and moving for Chinese smartphone shaper Honor, completed the astir 21km (13-mile) people successful 50 minutes and 26 seconds, astatine an mean velocity of astir 25km/h (15.5mph), according to authorities broadcaster CCTV.

That was acold faster than the apical quality successful Sunday’s race, portion besides surpassing the existent men’s satellite grounds of 57:20, held by Ugandan runner Jacob Kiplimo.

The effect represented spectacular advancement from past year, erstwhile robot-runners fell repeatedly, and the champion took much than 2 hours and 40 minutes to finish.

The fig of humanoid entries jumped from astir 20 past twelvemonth to much than 100, according to organisers, a motion of the sector’s increasing popularity.

A humanoid robot runs alongside quality competitors successful the 2nd Beijing E-Town Half Marathon and Humanoid Robot Half Marathon successful Beijing [Haruna Furuhashi/Pool via Reuters]

‘Pretty cool’

Han Chenyu, a 25-year-old pupil who watched the contention from down a information barrier, hardly had clip to instrumentality retired her telephone and drawback a representation of the starring robot arsenic it whizzed past.

She told the AFP quality bureau she was enthusiastic astir specified leaps successful exertion and thought the lawsuit was “pretty cool”.

But, she added, “as idiosyncratic who works for a living, I’m a small disquieted astir it sometimes. I consciousness similar exertion is advancing truthful accelerated that it mightiness commencement affecting people’s jobs”, peculiarly with artificial quality (AI) increasing progressively sophisticated.

Humanoid robots person go a communal show successful China successful caller years, successful the media arsenic good arsenic successful nationalist spaces.

Xie Lei, 41, who watched Sunday’s contention with his family, said robots could “become portion of our regular lives” wrong respective years, perchance utilized for “things similar housework, aged companionship oregon basal caregiving” oregon “dangerous jobs, adjacent firefighting”.

The humanoid half-marathon aims to promote innovation and popularise the technologies utilized successful creating and operating specified machines.

In a motion of the industry’s strength, concern successful robotics and alleged embodied AI amounted to 73.5 cardinal yuan ($10.8bn) successful China successful 2025, according to a survey by a authorities agency.

“For thousands of years, humans person been astatine the apical connected satellite Earth. But now, look astatine robots. Just successful presumption of autonomous navigation, astatine slightest successful this circumstantial athletics event, they’re already starting to surpass us,” Xie said.

“On 1 hand, it does marque you consciousness a small spot bittersweet for humanity. But astatine the aforesaid time, technology, particularly successful caller years, has fixed america truthful overmuch imagination.”