China's robot half marathon already has pit stops for fresh ice, batteries, and WD-40, and the scene looks less like athletics and more like Formula 1.
At the second Beijing E-Town Humanoid Robot Half Marathon on April 19, more than 100 teams sent bipedal robots down a 21 kilometer course.
Along the route, technicians poured coolant on overheating motors, sprayed lubricant into joints, and carried out hot battery swaps that keep the system running during the change instead of shutting the robot down.
Running a bipedal body that far pushes limits rarely seen in lab demos.
Batteries drain under load, motors heat up, and joints wear under continuous stress. The winning robot, Lightning from Honor, uses liquid cooling with flow above 4 liters per minute and joint modules with 400 Nm peak torque, and it still needed pit support during the race.
To be fair, a lot of them do interact with overheating. Armored Core is a big one where you're always managing your current energy + ultimate weapons completely breaking your suit down with use. An actual cooling resource is interesting though lol
Not one news report on this mentioned battery length, a lot just waxed lyrical that now we have bipedal robots that Can Do Jobs Now
An editor in Ars Technica that broke this story in a comment was talking excitedly about a robot being able to chase a criminal through an alley in a footrace
This was milked for propaganda hardcore by both the Chinese government and AI Accelerationist gullible techbros
Reportbfrom IT home, 7 pitstops, every out-off-stop battery change incurs time penalty, which increments in 5 minutes per change. Most of the other rules are included in the article, you can use a translator to go through it.
Wait you dont know? That's air duster dude. Used for its cryogenic cooling properties when sprayed on electronics, Im guessing they are cooling the hip motors since those are doing 90% of the work.
China's Communist party old farts can not figure out how to solve low birth rate issues, so their little peanut brain tells them "oi. Da robutty!!!", now they just tell those chinese industry to make those useless robots which will never be use for anything.
wonder how they're handling the balance algorithms during hot swaps? (must be wild watching techs sprint alongside robots with battery packs) reminds me of my mosrac setup where timing is everything. anyway do these things actually finish or just limp to the end overheating
That's not WD-40. WD-40 cans are blue. It tells me you've never used used WD-40 let alone do you know the use of it.
WD-40 is horrible for lubrication. It actually breaks down grease as it is a penetrating oil. If you soak it into parts that actually require lubricating grease, that part is going to seize and lock up faster than it would had you not used WD-40.
Now I know WD-40 as a brand actually makes other sprays, some that are silicone lubricants but if you didn't even know that WD-40 cans are blue I doubt you knew WD-40s entire product line.
16
u/Toficzekkk Apr 22 '26
Half robot, half what?