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Humanoid robots show rapid advances as they race past humans in Beijing half-marathon
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2026
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Technology
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Are they more efficient? It's like saying a jet is faster than a tortoise otherwise.
Over most distances that most tortoises actually want to travel, I suspect they're not much slower than a jet.
Tortoises hate being asked to open their shells by airport security.
Well, in pure energy usage, no; however if you take into account the energy usage of the whole chain, they're orders of magnitude better.
After all, they can even be hooked up to a solar panel directly. For us to get 2000 kJ of energy, we need to water plants for a year, transport them, spend more than 2000 kJ of electricity cooking, and that's not even considering raising an animal for x months or years which needs >5000 kJ a day to just exist. Our sun->movement energy efficiency rate is pretty appalling and orders of magnitude worse than a robot's - even if the robot is just hooked onto the regular grid.
Then you have to also include all of those human energy costs that went into producing the hardware and software for this thing. Mining, manufacturing, assembly, etc.
and what is the life span of a computer going out into the world on the regular? thats my only gripe with dystopian robot futures, there are no materials that resists the elements for any period time without regular maintenance.
There's something very very off with this calculation, because you calculate the whole process of getting the energy for the human part but didn't also calculate the energy needed to build a solar panel which require a factory which require mining which also require transportation. Is the efficiency still better then? I don't really know, but for us human we can just go out and forage some fruits and veggies and fungi without all those modern infrastructure, robot can't forage sunlight.
First of all, I'm going to say that I don't think this comparison actually makes sense and I was just entertaining the question of the message I was replying to - humans are machines are way too different to reduce the comparison to merely "which is more energy efficient".
But second, I compared to the same level - I stopped at infrastructure. I didn't consider the costs (energy or otherwise) of building a solar panel or power plants in the same way I didn't consider the costs of a frying pan, a hob, or farms. Because if we do that, then any point we make about this needs to be a 500 page dissertation, not a Lemmy message.
The good news is that data for how much material/energy is required for a solar panel is freely available, and also that a solar panel can be used for energy generation many more times than a cow.
Which also uncomparable because like i said, we can forage and cook(or eat it raw) with no modern tools or money required, robot can't forage sunlight without modern tech. Like you said, it's a silly comparison that doesn't make sense at all, which is what i trying to point out.