China hosts the first humanoid robot half-marathon with humans

Beijing hosted the world's first humanoid robot half-marathon, but they finished far behind humans. On Saturday, more than twenty bipedal machines took to the 21 km course in the southeastern Yizhuang district, home to many of the capital's IT companies, competing alongside 12,000 amateur runners.

CNN writes about it.

How the robots covered the track alongside humans

The race was a demonstration of Chinese achievements in the field of humanoids amid competition from the United States, which is still ahead in terms of model complexity. The robots of various shapes and sizes set off from a country park and had to overcome the slight ups and downs of the track. Just like humans, they were "refuelled" on the way: engineers changed batteries and, if necessary, even replaced the vehicles themselves, which cost the team a ten-minute penalty.

Tiangong Ultra, created by the Beijing Humanoid Innovation Center, was the first to finish the race, with a time of 2 hours and 40 minutes. For comparison, the world record for humans is 56:42, and the winner of the men's race that day finished in 1 hour and 2 minutes. Despite the lag, Oregon State University professor Alan Fern acknowledged the robots' time as unexpectedly high and noted that there is no leader in the world humanoid race yet.

According to the Center's CTO, Tan Jian, Tiangong Ultra's success was due to its long "legs" and the algorithm that imitates human running. The batteries were changed only three times. Nevertheless, the 1.8-meter robot, like most of its "colleagues," was constantly being held up by an assistant to prevent it from falling. Some machines even ran on a leash or under remote control.

The competition was held against the backdrop of a government strategy: in 2023, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology called humanoids a "new frontier of technological competition" and set a goal of mass production by 2025. In the meantime, while videos of Chinese robots riding bicycles or performing flips have been garnering millions of views, Saturday's race showed that at least in running, humans are still ahead.

As a reminder, the Chinese company Unitree shared the new video with the trick their humanoid robot G1 learnt. It is the first to perform the acrobatic "kip-up" trick.

We also wrote that the humanoid robot G1 has learnt to perform other acrobatic tricks. Unitree shared the video of the robot performing an almost ideal side flip.