Bioparity.

Methodology

How Bioparity decides what counts as parity, what counts as a valid robot performance, and what the ledger refuses to score at all.

Why bipedal?

Parity is a biological question, not a performance question. We are not tracking the fastest mechanism — wheels will beat legs at flat-ground speed indefinitely. We are tracking whether robots can match humans under human biomechanical constraints. The question we exist to answer is: "Can a machine built like us outperform us at what we do?" A wheeled robot winning a 100m sprint tells us nothing about that question. A bipedal robot running 9.57 seconds does.

Seed data vs. verified performances

The site you are reading right now is a seed release. Every human world record in the ledger is real, current as of publication, and cited to its sanctioning body. Every robot performance, by contrast, is an illustrative placeholder — generated to exercise the validation engine across the full range of status cases:

  • Parity — a robot within the metric-type epsilon, even if numerically better
  • Robot Lead — outside epsilon and beating the human
  • Fallback — best experimental row when no eligible+validated row exists
  • Eligibility fail — a wind, surface, or equipment violation that would otherwise win
  • Hard fail — non-bipedal, tethered, or terrain-mismatched submissions that never enter the ledger at all

A row graduates from experimental or unverified to verified when a contributor opens a pull request supplying a source_url from one of the recognized sanctioning bodies listed below. Until that happens, every robot card on the site carries a clear validation badge so a casual reader can tell a placeholder from a sanctioned record at a glance.

The infrastructure — schema, validator, projection engine, audit trail, contribution flow — is ready and tested. The data pipeline is open. Real performances are welcome via PR; see /submit.

Hard fail constraints

A robot performance is rejected outright — never enters the ledger — if any of:

  • locomotion_type is not bipedal
  • energy_source is not integrated (tethered power and external pneumatics fail)
  • terrain_match is not true (must compete on the regulation surface for the event)

Eligibility (independent of validation)

A performance that passes hard-fail can still be ineligible for record purposes. Each condition below independently sets eligible = false; the rejection reason lists every failing condition, not just the first:

  • wind_speed_mps > 2.0 (null is allowed for indoor events — null does not fail)
  • wind_legal == false
  • surface_standardized == false
  • equipment_compliant == false

Validation status

A separate axis from eligibility. Three values:

  • verified — citation from a recognized sanctioning body. Required for primary ledger status.
  • experimental — illustrative seed data or unsanctioned demos. Surfaces with a "Fallback: experimental" flag when no verified+eligible row exists.
  • unverified — pending or unsourced. Never selected for status.

Status precedence

Computed at read time. Stored values are inputs only — derived fields are never persisted to disk.

  1. If no selectable robot performance exists, status is Human Lead (no robot attempts) or Human Lead (no eligible robot performance).
  2. If |robot − human| / human ≤ ε for the event's metric type, status is Parity — even when the robot is numerically better.
  3. If outside ε and the robot beats the human in the right direction, status is Robot Lead.
  4. Otherwise, status is Human Lead.
ε(time_sprint) = 1e-4 · ε(time_endurance) = 1e-3 · ε(distance) = 1e-3 · ε(score) = 1e-2

Two parity meters

The homepage shows two denominators side by side, never one without the other:

  • Primary: share of events robots have actually attempted that are at Parity or Robot Lead.
  • Secondary: share of all tracked events at Parity or Robot Lead.

The primary alone overstates progress; the secondary alone understates it. Both are true; together they are honest.

Recognized sanctioning bodies

A robot performance is treated as verified only when cited from one of these bodies:

  • World Athletics — World Athletics
  • FINA — World Aquatics (FINA)
  • ISU — International Skating Union
  • IWF — International Weightlifting Federation
  • UCI — Union Cycliste Internationale
  • World Archery — World Archery Federation
  • ISSF — International Shooting Sport Federation
  • FIS — International Ski and Snowboard Federation
  • IBU — International Biathlon Union
  • IBSF — International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation
  • FIG — International Gymnastics Federation
  • World Rowing — World Rowing Federation
  • Guinness World Records — Guinness World Records
  • ProRL — Professional Robotics League
  • Beijing E-Town Half Marathon — Beijing E-Town Humanoid Half Marathon
  • World Humanoid Robot Games — World Humanoid Robot Games

Projections

Linear least-squares regression on compliance-valid + eligible performances. Requires at least 3 points. Suppressed when r² < 0.3, the trend regresses, projection lands in the past, projection lands beyond 2100, or status is already Parity / Robot Lead.

Confidence is reported as high (n ≥ 6, r² ≥ 0.7), medium (n ≥ 4, r² ≥ 0.5), or low. A projection is a curve through past data — not a prediction.