🤖70% humanoids failed in robot marathon, 3D boiling-based cooling tech, 3,000-year-old Iron Age factory found

Around 21 humanoid robots were pitted against human marathoners in a first-of-its-kind athletics competition in Beijing. However, of the twenty-one robot competitors, it turns out, only six were able to finish the race at all.

The competition set the robots against no less than 12,000 human runners over a 13.1-mile (21.1 km) half-marathon distance course.

Even with all the attention on the robots, human runners typically showed better overall performance. Dive deeper into this Must-Read.

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🤖 Heads detached, battery ran out: 70% humanoids failed in robot marathon

The winning entrant, “Tiangong Ultra,” finished the race in 2 hours 40 minutes, just within the human qualifying time of 3 hours and 10 minutes. However, most of the other robots broke down, overheated, fell repeatedly, or even had their heads detached.

To this end, duct tape and constant human assistance, including battery swaps and water sprays for cooling, were crucial. Some of the robots even ran in kid-sized sneakers and had missing fingers or heads to save weight.

Some of the highlight “fails” include a robot called “Huanhuan.” This robot could only muster a pace about the same as a snail and suffered from uncontrollable shaking.

📱3D boiling-based cooling tech shows 7x performance boost for chips

The Japanese researchers combined microchannel geometry with capillary structures to set a performance record, paving the way for advances in electronics and sustainable tech.

Moore’s Law has fueled decades of progress in electronics, with chips becoming ever smaller and more powerful. But this miniaturization comes at a cost—more heat in less space, pushing current cooling methods to their limits.

To tackle this growing issue, researchers from the Institute of Industrial Science at the University of Tokyo have developed a new cooling technique for microchips.

🟣 3,000-year-old Iron Age purple dye factory found in Israel

For the first time, archaeologists discovered an industrial purple-dye factory that remained in business for 500 years between 1100 and 600 BCE in Israel.

A team from the Zinman Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University and the University of Chicago recently uncovered the first site in “the entire world” at the fishing village of Tel Shiqmona on Israel’s Carmel coast.

The team identified 176 artifacts associated with the dye production or involved in the dyeing process.

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