Humanoid robots participated in a half marathon together with humans in Beijing, China on April 19. In all, 21 machines took part in the race, competing with thousands of people. This is the first time that a competition of this kind has taken place.

The automatons were of different shapes and sizes — some were one meter tall; others were as tall as 1.80 meters. Many of them have faces that imitate those of humans, with blinking eyes and artificial smiles.

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The performance of the machines was worse than expected. One of the robots fell right at the start and took a few minutes to get up. Another hit a fence and knocked down the operator who accompanied it. There was also a robot that needed to be rescued by a human. The first places went to real people.

The highlight among the machines was the Tiangong Ultra model, which completed the course in 2 hours and 40 minutes. It was assembled at the Beijing Humanoid Robotics and Innovation Center, an organization that is the result of a partnership between the government and large companies.

Artificial athletes are expected to become more common in the coming years. In 2024, Google’s artificial intelligence laboratory announced the creation of a machine capable of playing table tennis.

Sources: G1, Exame, Reuters and CNN.

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