Humanoid robots overtake humans in Beijing half marathon

The inaugural edition of the race last year was fraught with setbacks and most robots failed to finish. Last year’s champion robot clocked a time of 2 hours and 40 minutes, more than double the time of the human winner of the conventional race.

The contrast this year was stark. Not only did the number of participating teams increase from 20 to over 100, but several leading robots were noticeably faster than professional athleteswith an advantage of more than 10 minutes over the human winners.

Unlike last year, nearly half of the participating robots navigated the toughest terrain autonomously rather than being guided by remote control during the 13-mile race.

The robots and 12,000 men and women raced on parallel tracks to avoid collisions. The winning robot, developed by the Chinese smartphone brand Honorcompleted the race in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, several minutes faster than the half marathon world record set by Ugandan runner Jacob Kiplimo in Lisbon last month.

Honor teams, a company derived from Huaweitook the three podium places, all with autonomous navigation and recording times that broke world records.

The winning team’s engineer, Du Xiaodi, said their robot had been in development for a year, equipped with legs 90 to 95 cm long to mimic elite human runners, and with the technology of liquid cooling used on smartphones. Du said the sector is still in its early stages, but he was confident that humanoids would eventually reshape many industries, including manufacturing.

“Running faster may not seem significant at first, but it enables technology transfer, for example for structural reliability and cooling, and eventually for industrial applications,” Du said.

Competition shows China’s advances in robotics

Spectators, for the most part, saw the variety of humanoids of different sizes and gait styles on display as evidence of China’s improvements in robotics.

“The running posture of the humanoid robots I saw was really impressive… considering that artificial intelligence (AI) has only been in development for a short time, I am already very impressed that it can achieve this level of performance,” said Chu Tianqi, a 23-year-old engineering student at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. “The future will definitely be the era of AI. If people don’t know how to use AI now, especially if some people still resist it, it will certainly become obsolete,” added Chu.

Another spectator, 11-year-old student Guo Yukun, said that after watching the race he felt inspired to study robotics at university in the future. Guo said he attends regular robotics theory and programming classes at his elite school in Beijing and is part of his school’s team for the International Computer Olympiad, a global programming competition for high school students.

Economically viable applications are being tested

While economically viable applications of humanoid robots are still in the testing phase, demonstrating the physical capabilities of these machines in the half marathon highlights their potential to transform everything from dangerous jobs to combat into battlefields.

However, Chinese robotics companies are still struggling to develop the software of AI that allows humanoids to match the efficiency of human workers in factories.

Experts stated that the skills demonstrated during the half marathon, although fun, do not translate into widespread marketing. scale of humanoid robots in environments industrialwhere manual dexterity, real-world awareness and capabilities that go beyond small-scale repetitive tasks are crucial.

China seeks to become a global power in this cutting-edge sector and has implemented a wide range of policies, from subsidies to infrastructure projects, to foster local companies.

The most watched TV program in the country, the annual gala of Spring Festival of CCTV in February highlighted China’s effort to dominate the humanoid robot market and the future of manufacturing. This included a long martial arts demonstration where more than a dozen Unitree humanoids performed sophisticated fight sequences brandishing swords, bats and nunchucks in close proximity to children acting as artists.