A humanoid robot built by Honor, the Chinese smartphone maker spun off from Huawei, has won the Beijing E-Town half-marathon in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, beating the human world record by nearly seven minutes.
Uganda's Jacob Kiplimo set the men's half-marathon record of roughly 57 minutes at the Lisbon road race last month.
Honor swept the podium, with its second and third robots finishing in approximately 51 and 53 minutes respectively, all navigating the 21-kilometre course autonomously.
The winning machine, named Flash, marks a dramatic improvement from last year's inaugural event, when just six of 20 robot teams completed the course and the champion finished in two hours and 40 minutes.
This year's field grew to more than 100 teams, and nearly half of the robot entrants navigated the course without remote control, relying instead on autonomous systems.
Organisers staged the robots alongside 12,000 human runners on parallel tracks to prevent collisions, while a robot traffic officer directed participants using arm gestures and voice commands.
Du Xiaodi, an Honor engineer on the winning team, said the robot had been in development for a year and was fitted with legs 90 to 95 centimetres long to mimic the stride of elite human runners.
It uses liquid cooling technology adapted from Honor's smartphones to manage heat during sustained exertion.
Du said the achievement had practical applications beyond sport, arguing that the engineering advances in structural reliability, cooling and autonomous navigation would eventually transfer into industrial settings.
"Running faster may not seem meaningful at first, but it enables technology transfer, for example, into structural reliability and cooling, and eventually industrial applications," Du said.
The event was not without mishaps: one robot fell at the start line and another crashed into a barrier after crossing the finish.
Engineers and commentators cautioned that while physical performance has advanced rapidly, the software needed for dexterous industrial tasks still lags well behind, and real-world commercial deployment of humanoid robots remains in its early stages.
Related reading
- Anthropic opens Bluetooth API to let makers connect hardware devices to Claude
- Cadence partners with Nvidia on robotics artificial intelligence
- WIRobotics selected for Physical AI Fellowship cohort
The race reflects China's broader push to develop humanoid robotics as a strategic technology, with Beijing's 2026-2030 five-year plan explicitly targeting the sector.
London-based research firm Omdia recently ranked three Chinese companies, AGIBOT, Unitree Robotics and UBTech, as the only first-tier vendors globally for general-purpose humanoid robot shipments.
The recap
- Humanoid robots competed in Beijing half-marathon alongside humans.
- Honor's winning robot finished in 50 minutes 26 seconds.
- Nearly half of entrants navigated the 21-km course autonomously.
