Robot runner handily beats humans in half-marathon, setting new record

A humanoid robot took the fastest half-marathon record away from human athletes.

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[anonymouschicken]

This should not be a particularly warm take, but....



No. No it did not. A humanoid robot is doing something categorically different than a human athlete. The two do not compete. The two cannot compete. The only thing that robot is doing that's even faintly related to running a marathon is bipedal locomotion, and only in that way is it any different than a remote control car driving 13.1 miles - a task that is trivial for almost any self-propelled machine with a battery or energy source capable of powering it for whatever amount of time it takes to traverse that distance. Let's not trivialize human accomplishments.

You took the words out of my mouth. Ultimately what we have is a machine that can cover some physical distance faster than humans can. Cars, trains, and planes have been doing that for a long time now. The only interesting thing about this machine is the fact that the specific mechanism it used to cover the distance does resemble humanoid running. But I can't imagine that it's very good at "running" in any context other than a carefully curated environment. Did it encounter any rough terrain, or was the road surface flat and smooth the whole way? Were there any significant hills? Did it have to make any "decisions" along the way, or was the route pre-programmed into the robot? Also, the article noted it ran along a parallel track, presumably to keep it separate from the human runners for safety concerns. Would it be able to navigate a crowded field of runners, or would it crash into people?

To me this is just like all the other humanoid robot applications I've seen - something that's expensive, brittle, and situational, which is extremely adapted to a specific task that humans are already well-suited to perform. While still an impressive feat of engineering, I struggle to imagine a world where these robots are actually useful for very much.