Robot Named Lightning Blows Past Human Runners To Set Half-marathon Record In Beijing

Slide over, Jacob Kiplimo. The world’s fastest quality successful nan half-marathon is still conscionable that, but nan Ugandan’s grounds clip of 57 minutes, 20 seconds, was obliterated Sunday successful Beijing by a 5-foot-5 humanoid robot named Lightning.

Lightning was 1 of much than 100 robots running nan 13.1-mile race successful nan Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area (a.k.a Beijing E-Town). Although galore collapsed aliases collided pinch robot brethren, Lightning avoided a superior mishap and crossed nan decorativeness line successful 50 minutes, 26 seconds.

That’s 6 minutes, 54 seconds faster than Kiplimo’s people group past period successful Lisbon, aliases astir nan clip it takes to soft boil an ovum to custard-like perfection. It besides was much than 10 minutes faster than immoderate of nan 12,000 men and women who ran nan Beijing title successful separate, parallel lanes.

Lightning — agleam reddish and designed by Chinese smartphone marque Honor — slammed into a barricade and toppled down nan stretch, but nan robot helped itself backmost up pinch quality assistance and propelled its three-foot-long legs to victory.

This was nan race’s 2nd twelvemonth nan race. A twelvemonth ago, galore mechanical competitors overheated and fell. Only six of 21 completed nan course. Lightning was astir 3 times faster than past year’s victor that vanished successful 2 hours, 40 minutes and 42 seconds.

This year, rules were “optimized,” according to nan Beijing Town website, pinch entries moving either by autonomous navigation aliases distant control. Lightning was propelled by autonomous navigation.

Awards were added for Best Endurance, Best Gait, Best Design and Best Perception.

The title was besides acold much awesome than nan world’s first Humanoid Robot Games successful Beijing. The three-day August arena included almost 300 teams from 16 countries competing successful shot and kickboxing successful summation to track.

The New York Times reported that during shot matches “child-size robots tripped complete each other, falling down for illustration dominoes” and that 1 robot knocked over a quality unit personnel during a moving event.

A twelvemonth later, nan metropolis of Beijing called Sunday’s title “a awesome measurement guardant for nan robotics manufacture — accelerating nan modulation of humanoid robots from laboratory to large-scale, real-world application.”

Zhao Haijie, 29, ran nan fastest clip among humans, finishing successful 1 hour, 7 minutes and 47 seconds. He said nan robots successful an adjacent lane were really scooting.

“I felt it was going rather fast,” Zhao said successful an question and reply pinch NBC News. “It conscionable went whoosh correct past me.”

With each owed respect to nan latest procreation of Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot, China appears to beryllium nan world leader successful robotics. The nonprofit waste and acquisition group International Federation of Robotics says much robots usability successful China than nan remainder of nan world combined. At slightest 80 humanoid robot companies run successful nan country, 5 times that of nan United States.

One of China’s starring robotics companies, Unitree Robotics, already has a humanoid robot connected nan marketplace that tin walk, creation and execute basal tasks. Its slightest costly type costs astir $6,000.

“The U.S. leads successful technological innovation, while China excels successful velocity of implementation,” P.K. Tseng, an expert astatine nan tech consulting patient TrendForce, told The Times. “The existent turning constituent will get erstwhile humanoid robots move beyond R&D prototypes to large-scale deployment.”

Does creating nan world’s fastest bipedal humanoid successful a half-marathon agelong China’s lead successful nan wide robotics race?

The astir applicable invention that Lightning brought to nan title was joints equipped pinch a liquid-cooling strategy adapted from Honor’s smartphones.