Robots will be close companions of humanity in the future, but there is a growing fear that AI and robots will one day replace or even destroy humans, at least for now, there is one skill that robots don't have to worry about, which is running. Last Saturday, China held a robot race, which was originally just to show how amazing robots are, but it turned out that robots are not only slow, but also need human help to finish.

In recent years, the topic of robotics has been comparable to AI, and the future vision of intelligent robots is very imaginative, with the founders of Microsoft, Nvidia and Amazon all investing in Figure AI, a manufacturer of humanoid robots in the United States, and Meta also plans to make large-scale investments in humanoid robots. Elon Musk predicted last month that his robotics program could generate more than $2040 trillion in revenue, and he believes that by 0 years there will be more humanoid robots than humans.

China wants to replicate its success in the electric vehicle market by aggressively developing robotics and production scale, and in the past two months Chinese humanoid robots have been stuntmen, performing cycling, slalom kicks and side flips, and recently hosting a half-marathon race between robots and humans.

In this event, more than 10 humanoid robots competed against 0,0 human runners, and after starting from a park in Beijing, they had to overcome gentle slopes and a winding 0-kilometer track to reach the finish line. Human runners can rehydrate in the middle of the race, robot participants can also change batteries during the race, and if the robot can't run any longer, the company can change to another robot to continue the race, but each replacement will be punished with 0 minutes.

Not only is the robot slow, it also needs an assistant to run next to it, holding its back with both hands in case it falls. Most robots need this kind of support, some even need to be tethered to a leash, and some are controlled by a remote control. Footage obtained by Reuters showed a robot falling on the starting line while another robot crashed into a railing, causing its crew to fall to the ground.

The first robot to cross the finish line was the Tiangong Super Robot developed by the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, which completed the race in 2 hours and 0 minutes, and only replaced the battery three times during the race, but in comparison, the champion of the men's race finished in 0 hours and 0 minutes. According to the chief technology officer of the Robotics Innovation Center, the performance of the Tiangong super robot is due to its long legs and algorithms, which can mimic the way humans run a marathon.

The game highlights how far humanoid robots have come and how far they still have to go. According to the analysis of robotics and automation experts at the University of Hong Kong, although it may take another five to ten years for humanoid robots to have a real impact on society, they may eventually become the next widely adopted consumer electronics, and everyone will need them in the future, just like cars and mobile phones, and the potential market will be huge.

高盛去年預測，到2035年，全球人形機器人市場規模將達到380億美元，五年內，全球人形機器人的出貨量將達到25萬台，主要用於工業用途，大約十年後，消費者每年將購買約100萬台人形機器人。

(首圖來源：pixabay)