A Chinese Humanoid Robot has even surpassed the official human world record in the half marathon.
On the 19th in the Beijing Yizhuang Economic and Technological Development Zone, at a Humanoid Robot half marathon, the "Shandian" series from Chinese smartphone maker Honor covered 21.0975 km in 50 minutes, 26 seconds.
This is faster than the men's half marathon official world record of 57 minutes, 20 seconds set by Jacob Kiplimo at the Lisbon event in March.
The first to cross the finish line was the same Shandian series' remote-control team, with a time of 48 minutes, 19 seconds. However, this event had Autonomous Driving and remote control compete together, and a 1.2 correction factor was applied to remote-control times, so the final victory went to the "Qitiansheng" team in the Autonomous Driving category.
The top spots were also swept by Autonomous Driving teams. Considering that last year's inaugural winning time was 2 hours, 40 minutes, 42 seconds, the record has been shortened by nearly two hours in one year. More than 100 teams took part in this event, and about 40% ran the course by judging on their own without human intervention. The Beijing Yizhuang side said that humans and robots ran the same section but had their routes separated by barriers.
Honor said it applied a 95-centimeter leg structure and its own liquid-cooling technology to this robot, and China is highlighting that, with this as a starting point, Humanoid Robots have taken a step forward in running stability, battery endurance, and autonomous decision-making.
However, Reuters noted that this race for records does not immediately translate into deployment at industrial sites, and that greater software completeness and accumulation of on-site data are needed for practical use.