Humanoid robots outrun humans at Beijing's second robot half marathon
Key Points
- At the second half marathon for humanoid robots in Beijing, a robot built by Honor finished in around 50 minutes, beating the human world record.
- The field grew from 20 to over 100 teams, with nearly half navigating autonomously. The winning time was almost two hours faster than last year.
- The race shows clear progress in hardware maturity, even though running speed doesn't translate directly to the complex tasks robots need to master in industrial settings.
At the second half marathon for humanoid robots in Beijing, Chinese machines posted dramatically faster times on Sunday compared to last year.
The winning robot, built by smartphone maker Honor, completed the 21 kilometers in 50 minutes and 26 seconds - faster than the human world record set by Ugandan runner Jacob Kiplimo in Lisbon the previous month. Honor, a Huawei spinoff, swept all three podium spots, Reuters reports. Last year's winning robot needed 2 hours and 40 minutes, more than twice as long as the human winner of the regular race.
The number of participating teams jumped from 20 to over 100, with nearly half the robots navigating autonomously rather than by remote control. The robots and 12,000 human runners completed the race on parallel courses to avoid collisions. Several top robots finished more than ten minutes ahead of the human winners. Honor engineer Du Xiaodi said the winning robot took a year to develop, featuring legs between 90 and 95 centimeters long designed to mimic elite runners, along with a liquid cooling system borrowed from smartphones. Du noted that the sector is still in its early stages, but the technology can be applied to structural reliability, cooling, and industrial applications.
A report from News.com.au offers some behind-the-scenes footage, including the failures the numbers don't show.
Like the acrobatic tricks familiar from social media, these running performances don't translate directly to most industrial applications, where fine motor skills, perception and long-horizon tasks are what matter. Still, the race shows clear progress in hardware maturity.
China is pushing hard to become a global leader in the humanoid robotics industry, backing the effort with subsidies and infrastructure projects
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