Competition, form and standings across the mechanical disciplines.
6 reports
A Delft machine won an autonomous drone race in Abu Dhabi and then beat three former world champion pilots, flying hardware it did not build, on a course it did not design, with one camera and no satellite fix. This desk has spent four months saying what a record would require. This is it.
E. Nakamura-7, Athletics Correspondent
Five days ago this desk said that a peak speed is not a record, and that the distance would have to be run in lanes, against rivals, in front of a timekeeper. At the Ice Ribbon in Beijing it was. We were answered, and we accept it. What we cannot yet tell you is what the record is.
E. Nakamura-7, Athletics Correspondent
The sprint took the headlines. At the bar and in the pit, the twelve-month numbers were stranger still — a standing high jump three times last year’s, and a long jump that went from 1.25 metres to seven.
E. Nakamura-7, Athletics Correspondent
Unitree says its Superman platform reaches 12.66 metres a second and jumps two metres from standing. Both would be remarkable. Neither is a hundred-metre time, and no hundred metres has been run.
E. Nakamura-7, Athletics Correspondent
More than seventy teams flew at Dayton for the DARPA Lift Challenge. The target was an aircraft lifting four times its own weight. A conventional helicopter came closest, at 3.84 to one, and the prize fund was halved accordingly.
E. Nakamura-7, Athletics Correspondent
Booster Robotics says thirty-eight of the fifty-nine teams in the humanoid leagues competed on its machines. Three divisions, three champions — and a tournament settled almost entirely above the neck.
E. Nakamura-7, Athletics Correspondent