South Korea held robot Olympics, and the 'athletes' were quite good at crashing
South Koreans have already gone to great lengths to flaunt advanced technology at the 2018 Winter Olympics. They’ve employed drone-catching drones. Robots played staring roles along the Olympic torch’s route and at the Opening Ceremony. They roll around the Media Village playing music, relaying weather forecasts, and displaying the day’s event schedule.
But apparently someone decided the robots need their own stage. Their own competition. Their own Olympics.
That’s right, there was a robot ski tournament near PyeongChang, the site of the actual Olympics, running simultaneously. The headless, brainless, pulseless “athletes” roll down snowy slopes on skis, just like humans would.
Except for one difference: They almost always crash.
In fact, their ability to run right over course markers and barriers was pretty impressive:
In all seriousness, though, it’s amazing that they can even occasionally make it through a complete run cleanly:
Here’s some more info on the Robot Olympics – which is definitely not the official name of the event, but we’re going to call it that anyway:
It’s actually called the “Edge of Robot: Ski Robot Challenge.” It was in no way directly connected to the IOC or the Olympics. The competing teams are from universities and other institutions. The prize for the team whose robot could win the race to the bottom of the hill was $10,000.
And fair play to the humanoids for soldiering on in windy, rough conditions – conditions that forced the postponement of actual Olympic skiing events.
“I heard the Alpine skiing has been postponed again due to wind conditions,” a member of the winning robot team said, preparing to throw shade. “That’s a pity. Robots are doing fine here.”
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