- An Honor robot has broken a half-marathon world record
- The era was set under a common humanoid and human race
- Over 100 robots were registered and almost half of them were autonomous
Humanoid robot runners have fared significantly better at the second Humanoid Robot Half Marathon in Beijing than they did at the inaugural event last year, even beating the fastest time ever set by a human – but there were still plenty of technical challenges and mishaps along the way.
As reported by Interesting Engineering and others, the race was run by the Honor Lightning robot, which completed the 13.1-mile / 21.1-kilometer course in 50 minutes and 26 seconds. That beats the world record of 57 minutes and 20 seconds set by Ugandan runner Jacob Kiplimo last month.
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It’s also a big improvement on the fastest robot time logged in the 2025 event, which was 2 hours, 40 minutes and 42 seconds. This year, the robots beat people for the first time – although the humans drove on a separate track to avoid collisions and damage from wayward machines.
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According to Honor engineer Du Xiaodi, the Lightning’s prowess is partly down to its long legs (which measure 0.95 meters or 37.4 inches) and a custom liquid cooling system developed in-house. Temperature control and avoiding overheating is actually one of the most difficult aspects of getting humanoid bots to run races like this.
“From the very beginning of the design, our robot was modeled after excellent human athletes with long legs of about 0.95 meters,” he said. “This is a big improvement and a highlight in terms of its appearance and design. We equipped it with a very powerful liquid cooling system, which was also largely developed in-house.”
‘Just like a T-1000’
Another significant change this year: nearly half of the robots in the race were autonomous, meaning no human control was needed. The bots had everything they needed on board to navigate the course and complete the race, although some manual battery changes were required along the way.
More than 100 robots took part in this year’s race, compared to 20 last year – but as you can see from the video below, not all of them made it to the finish line. In fact, some of them struggled to get over the starting line, showing that there is still plenty of room for improvement when it comes to these robotic athletes.
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Of course, the main purpose of these humanoid robots is not to run races, but to develop them to a stage where they can be as useful as possible – whether on an assembly line or in a disaster zone too dangerous for a human to enter. Speed and dexterity are essential for robots in many scenarios.
Reactions online have been mixed: Despite the technical prowess on display, many observers are concerned about keeping the bots in check. One commentator compares the racing droids to “how the T-1000 raced to capture John Connor” i Terminator 2while another says “I just want someone to clean my house”.
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