A humanoid robot that won a half-marathon race for robots in Beijing on Sunday ran faster than the human world record in a show of China’s technological leaps.
The winner from Honor, a Chinese smartphone maker, completed the 21-kilometer (13-mile) race in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, according to a WeChat post by the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, also known as Beijing E-Town, where the race kicked off.
That was faster than the human world record holder, Uganda’s Jacob Kiplimo, who finished the same distance in about 57 minutes in March.
The performance by the robot marked a significant step forward from last year’s inaugural race, during which the winning robot finished in 2 hours, 40 minutes and 42 seconds.
The scale of this year’s event was almost five times bigger than last year’s, with more than 100 teams joining the competition, including five from overseas.
But the race wasn’t without hiccups — one robot fell flat at the start line, another bumped into a barrier.
Beijing E-Town said about 40% of the robots navigated the course autonomously, while the others were remotely controlled.
State broadcaster CCTV said a robot served as a traffic officer to direct the participants with it arm gestures and voice.
In China, technology has evolved into an area of competition with the U.S. with national security implications. Beijing’s latest five-year plan vows to “target the frontiers of science and technology.” Speeding up the development of products like humanoid robots and their applications is part of the 2026-2030 plan for the world’s second-largest economy.
London-based technology research and advisory group Omdia recently ranked three Chinese companies — AGIBOT, Unitree Robotics and UBTech Robotics Corp. — as the only first-tier vendors in its global assessment for shipment numbers for general-purpose embodied intelligent robots.
They all shipped more than 1,000 units of the robots last year, with the first two companies shipping more than 5,000 units, the report said.
