A humanoid robot that won a half-marathon race for robots in Beijing on Sunday ran faster than the human world record in a show of China's technological leaps. The winner from Honor, a Chinese smartphone maker, completed the 13-mile race in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, according to a WeChat post by the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, also known as Beijing E-Town, where the race kicked off. That was faster than the human world record holder, Uganda's Jacob Kiplimo, who finished the same distance in about 57 minutes in March at the Lisbon road race, reports the AP. The performance by the robot marked a significant step forward from last year's inaugural race, during which the winning robot finished in 2 hours, 40 minutes, and 42 seconds.
But the competition, which was held alongside a race for humans, wasn't without hiccups—one robot fell flat at the start line, another bumped into a barrier. Du Xiaodi, Honor's test development engineer, said his team was happy with the results. Du said its robot design was modeled on outstanding human athletes, with long legs of around 37 inches, and was equipped with what he called a powerful liquid-cooling system, which was largely developed in-house. "Looking ahead, some of these technologies might be transferred to other areas. For example, structural reliability and liquid-cooling technology could be applied in future industrial scenarios," he said.
While it will still take time to achieve widespread commercialization of humanoid robots, spectators were already impressed by the robots. Sun Zhigang, who was in the audience last year, watched Sunday's race with his son. "I feel enormous changes this year," Sun said. "It's the first time robots have surpassed humans, and that's something I never imagined." Wang Wen, who came with his family, said robots seemed to have stolen much of the spotlight from human runners. "The robots' speed far exceeds that of humans," he said. "This may signal the arrival of sort of a new era."
Beijing E-Town said about 40% of the robots navigated the course autonomously, while the others were remotely controlled. State media outlet Global Times reported that a separate, remotely-controlled robot from Honor was the first to cross the finish line in 48 minutes and 19 seconds. But it said the winning robot used autonomous navigation and received the championship under the event's weighted scoring rules. State broadcaster CCTV reported that the runners-up, which were also from Honor and used autonomous navigation, finished the race in about 51 minutes and 53 minutes respectively. A robot served as a traffic officer to direct the participants with its arm gestures and voice, CCTV added.
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