The World's First Robot Olympics Were Both Impressive And Comical...

Last weekend, more than 500 humanoid robots and thousands of spectators traveled to Beijing for the first-of-its-kind World Humanoid Robot Games. Styled after the traditional Olympics, the games brought together 280 robotics teams representing 16 countries, including China, Japan, Germany and the United States.

So how did it go? Well...there's room for improvement. In the 1,500-meter race, one robot’s head popped off as it was rounding a bend, and another fell and lost an arm. Several didn’t finish the race, and others didn’t even get off the starting line. The winning robot finished with a time of 6 minutes and 29 seconds, well short of the current human record of 3 minutes and 26 seconds. Thankfully, we're still seemingly a long way from Skynet and Terminator robots.