To make up for an extremely laughable inaugural occasion, Beijing is operating again its humanoid robotic half-marathon. Happily, the occasion that pits humanoid robots made by Chinese language firms in opposition to one another throughout 13 miles went lots smoother this yr.
This yr's half-marathon hosted greater than 100 opponents, 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's a number of minutes quicker than the human file that was just lately set by Uganda's Jacob Kiplimo final month.
Honor swept the opposite podium spots, with the essential caveat that all of them navigated the course autonomously, in response to the state-sponsored tv information company CCTV. That's an enormous enchancment over final yr, the place the quickest time amongst 21 robots was achieved by Tiangong Extremely with a file of two hours and 40 minutes. Final yr's occasion noticed lots 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 yr, whereas the remaining have been remote-controlled. Regardless of the speedy enhancements, this yr's occasion nonetheless had its justifiable share of crashes, even from Honor's robots.
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