Robots break human records at Beijing Half Marathon

The winning runner in the Beijing Humanoid Robot Half Marathon finished the race today in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, much faster than the human world record of 57 minutes recently set by Jacob Kiplimo.

Comparing human and robot runtimes may seem unfair; One social media user Notice“My car can outrun a cheetah too.” However, the winning time represents a huge improvement over last year’s race, when The fastest robot finished the race in two hours and 40 minutes. (At the time, she quipped that this “wouldn’t be an impressive time for a human being.”)

The Associated Press reports This year’s winner was designed by the Chinese smartphone company Honor. It appears that the winning robot wasn’t actually the fastest, as a different Honor robot finished the race in 48 minutes and 19 seconds. But this was controlled remotely – the 50:26 robot was autonomous and won due to weighted scoring.

About 40% of participating robots competed autonomously, while the remaining 60% were controlled remotely, according to the E-Town Technology Center in Beijing. Not all of them performed as well as Honor’s robots, with one robot falling at the starting line and another crashing into a barrier.