1 hour ago
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Our race is run.
A Chinese-built robot comfortably beat the human half-marathon world record Sunday during an annual race in Beijing — although several other humanoid participants malfunctioned and fell around the finish line.
Lightning, the robot developed by the Chinese smartphone company Honor, took just 50 minutes and 26 seconds to complete the 13-mile race, smashing the human record of 57 minutes set last month by Uganda’s Jacob Kiplimo.
The event marked the second year in a row that humanoid runners have been entered in the Beijing half-marathon, with considerably more success this time around.
Last year, the fastest robot took more than two hours and 40 minutes to complete the race.
This year, dozens of other robots competed alongside the 12,000 human runners, although navigating a parallel course to avoid crashes.
Nearly half of the robot runners ran using autonomous navigation, while the others were controlled remotely, according to organizers.
Teams of technicians followed them behind in golf carts, carrying stretchers and wheelchairs to pick up any of the stricken droids.
One robot flipped just 200 feet from the starting line, finishing the race with its upper body held together with packing tape.
Another bot managed to cross the finish line before veering off course and falling straight into a bush.
Pictures showed one robot lying on its side after it, too, toppled over.
Xue Qingheng, whose startup Intercity Technology Co. created one of the robots that completed the half-marathon, admitted the technology isn’t perfect yet.
“Robots today have the body of Mike Tyson but are still missing a brain like Stephen Hawking,” he told reporters in an interview at his company’s studio before the event.
“Once the brain problem is solved, the scope for imagination here is immense,” he said.
The fastest human in the race, 29-year-old Zhao Haijie, took one hour, 7 minutes and 47 seconds.
He said the robots took the lead within the first three miles of the race.
“I felt it was going quite fast. It just whooshed right past me,” he told NBC News of one droid after the race.
With Post wires
English (US)