You can’t run from technology, especially not now. Over the weekend, event organizers in Beijing, China, hosted a half-marathon race featuring both humans and humanoid robots for the second straight year. The number of participating humanoid teams jumped nearly 500% this year, and, despite some hilarious moments, the machines ran away with the competition. This year’s winning robot outpaced last year’s by nearly two hours, but the real headline is that, for the first time, a robot beat the humans, proving that the only thing more powerful than mettle is metal.
We had a good run, humans: According to the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area (known as Beijing E-Town), which hosted the race, a bipedal robot named Lightning completed the race in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, shattering the human record of 57 minutes and 20 seconds 57:20 set by Uganda’s Jacob Kiplimo last month. To make matters worse, the robot added one of those 13.1 stickers to its car faster than Kiplimo, too.
Technological strides
Many of the participating robots were controlled remotely, but the winning Lightning robott, made by Chinese smartphone-maker Honor, navigated autonomously.
Battle bots: In the past year, China has hosted several humanoid sporting competitions, highlighting the progress the country has made since designating robotics as a key sector for rehabbing its technological image in 2015, per CNN.—BC
