Chinese robot sets new half-marathon record

What happened

A humanoid robot called Lightning won a half-marathon in Beijing on Sunday, beating his robotic competitors and the human runners in a parallel race by completing the 13-mile course in 50 minutes and 26 seconds — nearly seven minutes faster than the world record set by Uganda’s Jacob Kiplimo in Lisbon last month.

Who said what

The victory of Lightning, built by Chinese smartphone brand Honor, marked a “significant step forward from last year’s inaugural race,” when the winning robot “finished in 2 hours, 40 minutes and 42 seconds,” The Associated Press said. The “remarkable feat” was also a “big stride for China in its technological rivalry with the U.S.,” CNN said.

China already has “more robots at work” than “the rest of the world combined,” The New York Times said. Beijing also recently hosted the first Humanoid Robot Games, featuring “plenty of running, kicking and punching,” though the robots “also flailed around, crashed and fell over many times.”

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What next?

The leap forward in China’s humanoid engineering “is genuinely impressive,” Oregon State University robotics professor Alan Fern told the Times. But it’s “much less obvious” how a robot winning a half-marathon “translates into productivity and ultimately, profitability.”