BEIJING (AP) — A humanoid robot won a robotics half-marathon in Beijing on Sunday, beating the human world record and demonstrating China’s technological leap.
The winner from Chinese smartphone maker Honor completed the 21-kilometer (13-mile) race in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, according to a WeChat post from the Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone, also known as Beijing Yicheng, where the race started.
That’s faster than the human world record holder, Jacob Kiplimo of Uganda, who covered the same distance in about 57 minutes during the Lisbon road race in March.
The robot’s performance was a significant improvement over last year’s inaugural competition, when the winning robot finished in 2 hours, 40 minutes and 42 seconds.
But the race, which ran alongside the humans, wasn’t all smooth sailing – one robot fell on the starting line and another hit an obstacle.
Honor test development engineer Du Xiaodi said his team was satisfied with the results. Du said its robot design is modeled after outstanding human athletes, with legs about 95 centimeters (about 37 inches) long and equipped with what he said is a powerful liquid cooling system that was largely developed in-house.
“Looking ahead, some of these technologies may be transferred to other areas. For example, structural reliability and liquid cooling technologies can be applied to future industrial scenarios,” he said.
While widespread commercialization of humanoid robots will take time, audiences have already been impressed by the robots. Sun Zhigang, who had been in the audience last year, watched Sunday’s game with his son.
“I feel a huge change this year,” Sun said. “This is the first time a robot has surpassed a human, and it’s something I never imagined.”
Wang Wen, who came with his family, said the robots seemed to steal most of the attention from the human runners during the event.
“Robots are much faster than humans,” he said. “This could mark the beginning of a new era.”
Beijing Yizhuang said about 40% of the robots navigate autonomously on the track, while others are remotely controlled.
The state-run Global Times reported that an independent remote-controlled robot from Honor was the first to cross the finish line, in 48 minutes and 19 seconds. But it said the winner used autonomous navigation and was crowned champion under the event’s weighted scoring rules.
According to CCTV, the runner-up, also from Honor, used autonomous navigation and completed the competition in about 51 minutes and 53 minutes respectively. CCTV added that the robot acted as a traffic officer, directing participants with arm gestures and voice.
In China, technology has evolved into an area that competes with the United States and affects national security. Beijing’s latest five-year plan vows to “target the frontiers of science and technology.” Accelerating the development of products such as humanoid robots and their applications is part of the 2026-2030 plan for the world’s second-largest economy.
Omdia, a London-based technology research and consulting group, recently ranked three Chinese companies, AGIBOT, Unitree Robotics and UBTech Robotics Corp., as the only Tier 1 suppliers in its global assessment of universal physical intelligent robot shipments.
The report stated that their robot shipments exceeded 1,000 units last year, with the top two companies shipping more than 5,000 units.
___
AP video producer Liu Zheng in Beijing contributed to this report.
