Guinness World Records has put together a video featuring robots performing amazing feats.
Titled “Robots are taking over record-breaking,” the video (top) shows a range of clever contraptions built by teams from around the world, though Japan, a nation with a long-held reputation for robotic technology, features in many of the clips.
The video, posted on Monday, kicks off with the record for “most robots dancing simultaneously,” with more than 1,300 of them pulling a variety of moves in perfect sync with each other.
It also includes footage of Toyota’s talented basketball robot, which entered the record books a few years back for the “most consecutive basketball free throws by a humanoid robot (assisted)” when it sank 2,020 shots in 6.5 hours without breaking a sweat (or developing any kind of mechanical fault). Japan also has the record for the “most skips by a robot in one minute,” with a bird-like machine clearing a swinging rope 106 times in 60 seconds.
There’s also a table tennis robot (Japan again), and another that’s capable of solving a Rubik’s Cube in the blink of an eye.
Guinness World Records’ video also features footage of the “fastest 100 meters by a bipedal robot,” with pretty much just a pair of robotic legs completing the course in 24.73 seconds — a time that sounds rather leisurely when you consider that the current human record for the same distance is 9.58 seconds.
The “largest humanoid vehicle” stands at an imposing height of 27 feet and 9 inches (8.46 meters), and the “fastest swim by a robotic fish” saw an aquatic contraption cover 165 feet (50 meters) in 22.16 seconds. Honda’s defunct Asimo robot makes an appearance, too, as the “fastest-running humanoid robot” at 5.5 mph (9 kph).
An astonishing amount of work went into each and every one of these robots, with the kudos of entering the record books inspiring teams of engineers to develop even more complex technology that advances the capabilities of their impressive creations. But you can be pretty sure that in just a few years from now, most — if not all — of these records will have been well and truly smashed.
