A humanoid robot that won a robot half marathon in Beijing on Sunday ran faster than the human world record, showcasing China’s technological advances.
The winner from Honor, a Chinese smartphone manufacturer, completed the 21-kilometer race in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, as reported on WeChat by the Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone, also known as E-Town. This time beats the human world record holder, Ugandan Jacob Kiplimo, who ran the same distance in about 57 minutes in Lisbon in March.
The robot’s performance marked a significant improvement from the previous year’s inaugural race, where the winning robot finished in 2 hours, 40 minutes, and 42 seconds.
However, the competition, which ran alongside a human race, was not without incidents: one robot collapsed at the starting line and another hit a barrier.
Honor’s engineer Du Xiaodi expressed satisfaction with the results, attributing the robot’s design to exceptional human athletes with long legs measuring about 95 centimeters and equipped with a powerful liquid cooling system developed internally.
E-Town disclosed that around 40% of the robots autonomously completed the circuit, while others were remotely controlled.
In China, technology has become a competitive sector with the US, carrying implications for national security. Beijing’s latest five-year plan aims to focus on the frontiers of science and technology, accelerating the development of products like humanoid robots as part of its 2026-2030 plan for the world’s second-largest economy.
London-based technology research and consulting group Omdia recently ranked three Chinese companies – AGIBOT, Unitree Robotics, and UBTech Robotics – as the top providers in its global evaluation of intelligent robot shipment volumes for general use. These companies each delivered over 1,000 units of these robots last year, with the top two companies delivering over 5,000 each.
