A humanoid robot from Honor, a Chinese smartphone maker, won a half-marathon race in Beijing on April 19, running faster than the human world record holder. The robot completed the 21-kilometer course in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, outpacing Uganda’s Jacob Kiplimo’s world record of approximately 57 minutes set in March at the Lisbon road race.
The performance marks a major milestone in robotics development and reflects China’s rapid advancement in a field Beijing explicitly frames as strategic competition with the United States.
The Winning Design
The performance represented a dramatic leap from the race’s inaugural year, when the winning robot finished in 2 hours, 40 minutes and 42 seconds, according to Beijing E-Town, the development authority that organized the event.
Du Xiaodi, Honor’s test development engineer, said the team’s robot design was modeled on outstanding human athletes, with legs about 95 centimeters (around 37 inches) long. The robot was equipped with a liquid-cooling system developed largely in-house. “Looking ahead, some of these technologies might be transferred to other areas,” Du said. “For example, structural reliability and liquid-cooling technology could be applied in future industrial scenarios.”
On the Course
The race, held alongside a competition for human runners, saw some mishaps. One robot fell flat at the start line, and another bumped into a barrier. Beijing E-Town said about 40 percent of the robots navigated the course autonomously, while others were remotely controlled.
Spectators at the event expressed astonishment at the robots’ capabilities. Sun Zhigang, who attended the inaugural race the previous year and returned Sunday with his son, said the pace of advancement was striking. “I feel enormous changes this year,” he said. “It’s the first time robots have surpassed humans, and that’s something I never imagined.”
Wang Wen, who came with his family, suggested the robots had overshadowed the human competitors. “The robots’ speed far exceeds that of humans,” he said. “This may signal the arrival of sort of a new era.”
State media reported that a separate, remotely-controlled robot from Honor finished in 48 minutes and 19 seconds. However, under the event’s weighted scoring rules, the winning autonomous robot received the championship. The runners-up, also from Honor and using autonomous navigation, finished in approximately 51 and 53 minutes respectively, according to state broadcaster CCTV. A robot served as a traffic officer during the event, directing participants with arm gestures and voice commands.
China’s Robotics Leadership
China has made technological advancement a cornerstone of national strategy. Beijing’s five-year plan for 2026 through 2030 vows to “target the frontiers of science and technology,” with the development and application of humanoid robots identified as a priority for the world’s second-largest economy. This reflects Beijing’s view of technology as an arena of strategic competition with the United States, one with national security dimensions.
Chinese companies now dominate the robotics sector. London-based technology research group Omdia recently ranked three Chinese companies—AGIBOT, Unitree Robotics and UBTech Robotics Corp.—as the only first-tier vendors globally for general-purpose embodied robots. All three shipped more than 1,000 units last year, with AGIBOT and Unitree Robotics each shipping more than 5,000 units.