Humanoid ‘Lightning’ robot smashes the half-marathon record
The autonomous Lightning" robot finished the race in under an hour. | Photo: VCG / Getty ImagesAn autonomous scarlet robot named "Lightning" finished a 13-mile race in Beijing on Sunday in just 50 minutes and 26 seconds, less than half the time of last year's fastest robot, which took two hours and 40 minutes. As Reuters reports, Du Xiaodi, one of the engineers who developed Lightning at smartphone company Honor, said the robot "was in development for a year, fitted with legs 90 to 95 cm (35 to 37 inches) long to mimic elite human runners and liquid cooling technology used in its smartphones."
Lightning not only won the half-marathon, beating all 12,000 human runners, but also beat the human world record of 57 minutes and 20 seconds ...