By The Marathon, a race that existed for several thousands of years thanks to a very ambitious, proud and patriotic idiot that felt the need to fulfill his duty even if upon doing so it killed him.
Imagine if the internet or mobile phones existed sometime during ancient Greece, we wouldn’t now have to see people run themselves towards exhaustion.
Marathon Robot
Excuse my negativism, I find most sporting events interesting but the marathon isn’t interesting to me anymore and that’s because of the latest news from Japan.
It’s Japan that is at the cutting edge of humanoid robot developments, which is why they managed to pull off their latest achievement.
The Japanese have managed to develop these metal copies of humans to the point where they can autonomously run a marathon.
Marathon Robot
The marathon running humanoid have all been created by robot maker Vstone, the same company which actually hosts the cpu and cogs running race event.
Mind you, these robots don’t genuinely run but rather manage quickened walk, as is customary for this competition.
The robotic marathon race will be held on the 24th of this month and, predictably, it will be held in doors over a short circuit in Osaka. The loop is 100m long which means that in order to actually run a marathon, the humanoids will have to work up quite a few laps.
Marathon Robot
Actual hard numbers show how the Japanese robots will have to cover the same lap 423 times and then run another 95 m in order to be ready for the real thing, which is roughly 42 km in length.
When the event actually kicks off, it will have 5 robots lining up to run with the entire race being streamed online live via Vstone’s Ustream channel.
Negativity and sport preferences aside, I still find it rather difficult to find an actual point in creating such robots. My mind has robots helping people, not competing with them.
