Robots beat human records at Beijing half-marathon | TechCrunch

Last day to exhibit your breakthrough to 10,000+ tech leaders at Disrupt is on Oct 2. Book Exhibit Table Now. Disrupt doors open Oct. 13. Get your pass and bring someone with you at 50% off. REGISTER NOW. The winning runner at a Beijing half-marathon for humanoid robots finished the race today in 50 minutes and 26 seconds — significantly faster than the human world record of 57 minutes recently set by Jacob Kiplimo. Comparing human and robot running times may seem unfair; one social media user observed, “my car can outrun a cheetah too.” Still, the winning time is a massive improvement over last year’s race, when the fastest robot finished in two hours and 40 minutes. (Back then, I scoffed that this “would not be an impressive time for a human.”) The Associated Press reports that this year’s winner was built by Chinese smartphone maker Honor. It seems the winning robot wasn’t actually the fastest, as a different Honor robot finished in 48 minutes and 19 seconds. But that one was remote controlled — the 50:26 robot was autonomous and won due to weighted scoring. About 40% of participating robots competed autonomously, while the remaining 60% were remote controlled, according to Beij