Although the capacities like dance can be fun and eyes, they do not really show how useful humanoid robots are in real situations, explains Fern. Even being able to run a half -marathon is not a very useful reference for their skills – it is not as if there was market demand for robots that can compete with human runners. Benchmarks which, according to FERN, import them, are how much they can manage various real world tasks without human instructions step by step. “But I expected to see China evolve this year to focus more on achieving useful things, because people will get bored to dance and karate,” says Fern.
The robots that participated in the race came in a variety of forms. The shortest measured only 2 feet and 5 inches high. Forcing a blue and white tracksuit and waving spectators every few seconds, it was probably the favorite of the crowd. The largest, at five new feet, was the winner Tiangong Ultra.
What all robots have in common is that they are bipedes instead of running on wheels, a requirement to participate in the race. As long as the robots met this requirement, they were free to show creativity and the companies behind them adopted a wide range of strategies to try to obtain an advantage over their competitors. Some wore children's sneakers (although screwed to their pedals to avoid falling). Others were equipped with knee pads to protect their delicate parts from damage when they fell. Most robots made their fingers removed and some even miss the heads – you don't need such parts to run, after all, and remove them reduces the weight of a robot and the quantity of load placed on their engines.
Tiangong Ultra and another model, the N2 robot manufactured by the Chinese company Noetix Robotics, which won second place in the race, stood out from their coherent and slow pace. The performance of other humanoids was mainly disastrous. A robot called Huanhuan, who has a human head, only moved at the speed of a snail for a few minutes while her head was shaking uncontrollable – as if she could fall at any time.
Another robot named Shennong looks like a real Frankenstein monster, with the head that looks like Gundam and four helices of drones that face upside down. It is on a base with eight wheels, and it is not clear how it alone was not disqualifying. But it was not even the biggest problem of Shennong, because the robot immediately turned in two circles after taking off from the starting line, struck the wall and dragged with its human operators with. It was painful to watch.
The adhesive tape has proven to be the most effective problem solving tool. Not only did the humans who accompany him make makeshift robot shoes with adhesive tape, but they also used it to join a robot's head on his body after he fell several times during the race, which makes the scenes very discordant.
Each robot had human operators, often two or three run next to them. Some contained control panels that allowed them to give the robot instructions, including the speed to follow, while other operators paved the way for their robots and tried to clean potential obstacles on the ground. A good number of humanoids were held on what, well, pets for pets looked like. “You want to think of these more robots like directing a remote control car through the race. But the robots have no wheels,” explains Fern.
