A humanoid robot just ran a half-marathon faster than the world record holder. It might not seem impressive at first, but considering last year, the fastest robot at Beijing’s humanoid robot half-marathon finished in two hours and 40 minutes, this is a huge achievement.
As reported by the Associated Press, the winning robot at this year’s Beijing half-marathon crossed the finish line in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, comfortably beating the human world record of 57 minutes recently set by Jacob Kiplimo.
That’s a dramatic improvement in just 12 months, and it’s sparking lively debate.
Who built the winning robot?
The winning robot was built by Honor, the Chinese smartphone maker known for making unconventional and innovative phones. Yes, the same company that makes phones is now building robots that outrun world-class human athletes.
Here’s the twist, though. The winner wasn’t actually the fastest robot on the track. Another robot finished in 48 minutes and 19 seconds, but it was remote-controlled. The robot that took the top spot ran the race autonomously, and the final rankings used a weighted scoring system that factored that in.
About 40% of the robots in the race competed autonomously, while the remaining 60% were remotely controlled. Not everything went smoothly. One robot fell at the starting line, and another ran straight into a barrier.
Is it fair to compare robots and humans?
Honestly, probably not. But we have been doing this for ages. It was big news when IBM’s Deep Blue became the first computer to defeat a world chess champion, Garry Kasparov, and when DeepMind’s AlphaGo started beating top-ranked human Go players.
If you believe in folklore, the machine-versus-human competition started way back in the 1870s, when the legend of John Henry was born. He competed with a steam-powered drilling machine to prove humans were superior. A competition he won, but paid the price with his life.
No matter how you feel about this, one cannot deny that it’s incredible to see how far robots have come in just a decade, and that instills both excitement and fear.
