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A mere year ago, the half marathon for humanoid robots in Beijing mainly produced slapstick comedy.
The bots could be seen awkwardly trotting alongside their human handlers, often struggling to get anywhere near the finish line. The fastest time to cover the 13.1-mile distance was two hours and 40 minutes, allowing the winner to just barely qualify for a human participation award.
The second annual half marathon that took place this past Sunday, in contrast, was a stunning achievement. The fastest robot, a humanoid built by Chinese smartphone maker Honor, completed the course in a mere 48 minutes and 19 seconds — a stunning nine minutes faster than the human world record set by Ugandan runner Jacob Kiplimo earlier this year.
That top bot was remotely controlled by its human handlers. A separate Honor robot that autonomously navigated the course crossed the finish line in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, also crushing Kiplimo’s world record. Thanks to the event’s weighted scoring rules, it was the second robot that won the competition, not the technically-faster remotely controlled one, as the Associated Press explains.
The dramatic departure from last year’s performance perfectly illustrates the massive technological leaps the industry has seen over the last twelve months alone. China, in particular, has gone all-in to the point where government officials warned late last year that the extreme levels of robotics investment could be drowning out other markets and research initiatives.
While we patiently await robots that can do our dishes or fold our laundry — for now, athletic prowess and choreographed dance moves appear to be the predominant focus — the technological leaps on display could eventually trickle down to other areas as well.
“Looking ahead, some of these technologies might be transferred to other areas,” Honor’s test development engineer Du Xiaodi told the Associated Press. “For example, structural reliability and liquid-cooling technology could be applied in future industrial scenarios.”
Beyond beating humans in a 13.1-mile race, humanoid robots are also quickly becoming competitive in much shorter races as well. Case in point, robot maker Unitree showed off its H1 robot sprinting at 10.1 meters per second, or roughly 22 mph, earlier this month. That’s within spitting distance of the speed of Jamaican sprinting legend Usain Bolt, who averaged 10.44 meters per second during his world record 100-meter dash in 2009.
More on running marathon: Watching These Humanoid Robots Try to Run a Half Marathon Is Hilarious and Bizarre