A half marathon foot race in Beijing, China, saw thousands of humanoid robots of various sizes running right alongside their flesh-and-blood counterparts for an attempt to take the crown.
Footage shows the awkward bipedal robots trotting off, closely followed by their respective teams of two to three human navigators and engineers. As the Associated Press reports, the machines were separated by a divider from the hordes of human runners, making sure they didn't get trampled — or tipped over.
But judging by their performance, it's unlikely the robots will be rivaling their human counterparts any time particularly soon. Many of them visibly struggled to maintain a jogging pace, with their human helpers having zero issues keeping up. Others fell over or overheated.
However, the robots' goofy appearance made for an eye-catching show, with human runners and spectators alike taking photos and videos of the stiff-limbed contraptions.
Instead of getting snacks and drinks along the way, the robots made pit stops to swap their batteries.
A biped dubbed the Sky Project Ultra robot, developed by China's National and Local Co-built Embodied AI Robotics Innovation Center, took the top non-human spot, crossing the finish line in just over two hours and 40 minutes.
That's quite a bit slower than the average time it takes for a fit human runner to cover the 13.1-mile distance. As Wired points out, the slowest time for a human was 3 hours and ten minutes, which meant that Sky Project Ultra was the only bot to qualify for a human participation award.
A picture shows the Sky Project Ultra bot receiving a gold medal — which itself is in the shape of a humanoid