Robot takeover delayed

The much-heralded robot takeover probably won’t happen soon judging by results of the World Humanoid Robot Games. More than 500 humanoid robots from 16 countries traveled to Beijing recently to showcase their talents in the Olympic-style games. In opening ceremonies, robots marched, waved flags, and even did dance routines.

They then went on to events like soccer, kick boxing, and running with fairly clumsy results that included a lot of falling over. H1, the winning robot in the 1,500-meter race finished with a time of 6 minutes 29 seconds, substantially slower than the human record of 3 minutes 26 seconds. Meanwhile, his competition included robots who lost their heads — literally — or couldn’t move off the starting line.