In what may be the slowest marathon ever, five robots are competing in VStone's Robot Challenge - and you can watch their progress online.

The race, which is to complete 422 laps of a 100 metre indoor track, started today and is expected to last four days. As we reported earlier (see A Robot Marathon), competitors have to be bipedal and can be repaired along the way if necessary, but the time for the run includes any pit stop time. Details of the five competitors can be found on the Vstone site and you can join the spectators going to the live broadcast courtesy of ustream live but if so be prepared to be patient until one of the tiny marching machines comes into view and note that some of the streaming video shows the autonomous robot's-eye view. i.e. it follows the line!. (Note: The Vstone site is in Japanese - use Google Translate if this is a language you read.)

More Information:

A Robot Marathon

Vstone