Choongin Lee and colleagues at KAIST report that RAIBO2 finished a full marathon in 4 hours, 19 minutes and 52 seconds on a single battery charge. The total cost of transport is 0.25 against a human benchmark of 0.37. Scientific American reports the same one-charge marathon, over 26.2 miles, in an account published on Wednesday. The cited race timing is from 2024.
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One charge, 4 hours, 19 minutes and 52 seconds
Choongin Lee and colleagues at KAIST report in Nature that RAIBO2 finished a full marathon in 4 hours, 19 minutes and 52 seconds on a single battery charge. Scientific American reports the same finish on one charge and gives the distance as 26.2 miles, in an account published on Wednesday. The robot comes from the Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at KAIST in Daejeon. The cited race timing is from 2024, so the paper's news is the measured result and the machine behind it, not a race held this week. The time, 4 hours, 19 minutes and 52 seconds, and the single charge are the result both accounts carry. The 26.2 miles is Scientific American's statement of the marathon distance.[1], [2]
The transport cost is 0.25
The total cost of transport is 0.25 against a human benchmark of 0.37. That pair is the paper's comparison, a cost of moving, not a race placing. The paper ties the result to a force-transparent lightweight mechanism, a low-resistance motor driver and a locomotion controller that dissipates less energy. Range per charge is more than 3 times that of existing quadrupeds, and the loss figure uses a 1447 Wh pack. Scientific American's Wednesday account identifies the same one-charge marathon and the same machine, RAIBO2, without replacing the 0.25 and 0.37 comparison. The mechanism, the driver and the controller are the paper's account of how the cost came out at 0.25. The human benchmark beside it is 0.37.[1], [2]
What the Wednesday account adds
Scientific American reports that the run is faster than the average human marathon, over the 26.2 miles it states, on one charge. The Nature paper's time remains 4 hours, 19 minutes and 52 seconds, and its transport cost remains 0.25 against 0.37. The laboratory is KAIST's in Daejeon, and the cited timing is from 2024. Range per charge, more than 3 times existing quadrupeds, and the 1447 Wh pack, stay the paper's magnitude. The Wednesday piece and the paper are one result: a quadruped, RAIBO2, finishing a marathon distance without a second charge. The average-human comparison in Scientific American is a reading of that finish. The 0.25 figure is the paper's own transport-cost comparison with the human benchmark of 0.37.[1], [2]
