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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
61 points (85.9% liked)
Technology
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They didn't look all that advanced...
what are you talking about? that robot exploded better than any human could
Break dancing champ!
lol a stretcher?
I mean, it probably is the easiest way for them to carry it. But the sense of urgency with which they were running towards it was hilarious.
I should not have laughed so hard at that. I’m a horrible person.
Why, because you laughed at an organized pile of plastics and metal got broken?
This is impressive technology which has the potential to benefit humans by having things like robot firemen who just walk into flaming buildings and rescue people.
But who am I kidding? Tech companies will just it to cut jobs in order to enrich themselves and make everyone else poorer.
robot firemen who just walk into flaming buildings and rescue people.
I feels like robot will fries their chip and melt the wiring when they enter a building. It's like when people imagine they can use robot to go into heavily irradiated area to survey and do repair, but turn out the radiation will just fry the chip. There's still a lot more it can do though.
It can be insulated to some extent, but yeah.
We have chips that are radiation resistant, they're just not general purpose. They're used for things like voyager missions.
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.
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.
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.
Rapid advancement in walking and balancing, but not always advancement in useful things.
There's a golf cart following the bot with a guy using a remote control to drive the bot. So these robots are just like remote control cars. One even ran into the side railing.
These kinds of demonstrations are fun, but that doesn't mean they can function autonomously in construction sites, factories or households.
I'm disabled and would love to have one I could remote control around the house and garden to help with chores. But they don't even seem to be good enough for that.
They use this kind of bots and remote control for household chores: https://youtu.be/f3c4mQty_so Not that useful. They hope to use it to get enough data to make it more autonomous.
I'm sorry but that's a pretty useless achievement. Its like saying that an ebike is way faster in tour de France. What am I supposed to use it for. Pizza delivery? Maybe someone can enlightenment me.
Didn't one of these trip and shake itself to bits?
Ok now try it with wheels...
That's not the point of humanoid robots....
I can't think of a single reason a humanoid robot would need to move that fast that isn't war related... Literally any other application, like warehouse robots sorting oddly shaped items, would just be cheaper to use wheels and just keep the arms for dexterity
What if a woman needs her inhaler from home? You'd be the dude to tackle it thinking it stole her purse! /s
But seriously, I, Robot looks very different these days.
I can think of a few that aren't war related, but they are either kinky, depressing or dystopian.
Sweet, the trifecta.
So robots are ok but trans not?
cool now let's see 'em do the hurdles
Meanwhile, these are American robots:
Seriously, we are so fucking screwed.
That's some AI focused scam company that's only 4 years old.
This is what Boston Dynamics had 4 years ago already: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF4DML7FIWk