The development of a robot created to compete with human motorbike racing times has implications beyond the track.
The Thunderhill Raceway in California's Sacramento Valley is absorbed the oil of motorsport history.
It is home to the longest vehicle race in the United States, known as the 25 Hours of Thunderhill, and last September, it was host to an altogether different sort of race: a race amongst man and machine.
Out there, a motorbike driver took the bends of the course like some other expert rider. It was just very close that reality hit the observer: the rider wasn't human. It was a blue humanoid robot that seemed as though it had ventured straight out of a screenshot from the PC amusement Halo.