Robodog Runs Full Marathon

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Dog Racing

A robot dog has completed a full 26.2-mile marathon.

Built by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), the competitor—named RAIBO2—is the first quadrupedal robot to finish an official full-length marathon, the university stated.

The event took place on Sunday. RAIBO2 finished in 4 hours, 19 minutes, and 52 seconds. For context, the winning human time in the same race was 2 hours, 36 minutes, and 32 seconds, according to The Register.

Slow and steady may not have won outright, yet the machine still crossed the finish line. Future versions could further close the gap with human runners.

Steep Competition

The 22nd Sangju Dried Persimmon Marathon is known for its demanding hills, including two climbs of roughly 50 yards in elevation each.

Such terrain challenges human runners and places heavy energy demands on a four-legged robot, risking unexpected efficiency losses. Running out of battery would be equivalent to a human competitor dropping out.

KAIST engineers addressed this by simulating the hilly course and varied surfaces. They developed a high-torque transparency joint mechanism that lets the robot recover energy on descents, offsetting the power used on climbs.

Repeated ground impacts also stress a robot’s joints, so completing more than four hours of running demonstrated the durability of RAIBO2’s custom-built components.

Whirring Up

RAIBO2 now faces competition from bipedal robots. Earlier this month, the humanoid robot Tiangong paced human runners for the final 100 yards of a half-marathon in China.

KAIST researchers plan further development. “Through the marathon project, we demonstrated that RAIBO2 has the walking performance to stably execute services such as delivery and patrol in urban environments with many people and random objects,” said Choongun Lee, researcher at KAIST and co-lead author. “In follow-up research, we will add autonomous navigation functions to RAIBO and strive to achieve the world’s best walking performance in mountainous and disaster environments.”

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