Video: First Robot To Run Full Marathon Next Week

Serkan Toto

Dr. Serkan Toto is an independent consultant and advisor focusing on Japan’s web, mobile and social gaming industries. Based in Tokyo, he works together with financial institutions and startups worldwide. Serkan has been the Japan contributor for TechCrunch.com since 2008. He is sept-lingual, holds an MBA and is a PhD in economics. → Learn More

Thursday, February 17th, 2011

We all knew this day would come, and we all knew this would happen in Japan: robot maker Vstone has announced what it says is the first full marathon [JP] for humanoids on February 24 in Osaka. The group of five mini robots will “run” (rather walk) around a 100m long course exactly 421 times plus another 95m to complete a marathon (42.195km).

Vstone will start the race next Friday at 10am in the morning Japanese time and expects it to end at 8pm on the 27th. The whole event will be streamed live on the Vstone Ustream channel.

One of the humanoids and the robo car you see in the video embedded below will stream the race from their perspectives (channels of the humanoid, car).

This video shows the participating robots (you can see the Vstone Robovie is one of them) during a test run:

Via Robonable [JP]

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