Run, Robot, Run! Russian Machine-Marathoner's First Training Session

Russian-made Promobot v.3 registered as a participant in a marathon, and this is the first time in the history of running events that a robot will participate on a par with human marathoners. Watch the bot at its very first training session.

Promobot v.3 will participate in the 2017 Perm International Marathon, which will be held in the Russian city of Perm on September 2-3. The robot will run a distance of 3 kilometers along with thousands of runners from Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Germany, Kenya, Portugal, Italy and Great Britain. Distances will vary from 3 km to 42 km 195 meters.

The bot has recently conducted its first marathon training session, which is seen in this video published by the device manufacturer on YouTube. It moved for some 20 seconds but then… slowly fell down, leaving an "aftertaste" of hopelessness. Representatives of the company explained that they foresaw this scenario and have equipped the robot with a special training corps.

The robot is being developed by Perm-based company Promobot, a Skolkovo resident and the largest manufacturer of autonomous service robots in Russia and Northern and Eastern Europe. According to them, the participation of the robot in the marathon is necessary for testing its system of autonomous locomotion on open terrain and its orientation system in a crowd.