We've seen computers that can out quiz-show humanity's best, now Japan is putting a series of robots through endurance trials. There are lots of ways this could end for us — few of them are good.

To be fair, the five androids competing in Robo Mara Full, the 26-mile marathon in Osaka, Japan sponsored and organized by Vstone — a company specializing in robot design — are only knee-high. And they're even cute as they stumble around the track, as seen in this unfortunately non-embeddable video, some of them righting themselves after they fall.

But the organizers of this marathon say that the point of this 423-lap race isn't to see which battery-powered robot is the fastest, but to which can withstand the most wear and tear.

As I say, this will not end well.

Boston Glove, via BBC

(Originally posted by Marc Bernardin over on our sister site, Blastr)