Humanoid robot beats human world record for the first time at the Beijing half marathon — but some are still stumbling at the starting line | Tech Radar

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Humanoid robot beats human world record for the first time at the Beijing half marathon — but some are still stumbling at the starting line

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The Honor Lightning robot beat the other machines and the human runners (Image credit: NBC / You Tube)

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An Honor robot has beaten a world record for the half marathon

The time was set during a joint humanoid and human race

Over 100 robots were entered, and almost half of them were autonomous

Humanoid robot runners have performed notably better at the second Humanoid Robot Half Marathon in Beijing than they did at the inaugural event last year, even beating the fastest ever time set by a flesh-and-blood person — 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 57 minutes and 20 seconds set by Ugandan runner Jacob Kiplimo just last month.

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 have beaten people for the first time — though the humans were racing on a separate track, to avoid any collisions and injuries from wayward machines.

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According to Honor engineer Du Xiaodi, Lightning's prowess is partly down to its long legs (measuring 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 running races like this.

'From the very beginning of the design, our robot was modeled on outstanding human athletes, with long legs of about 0.95 meters," he said. "This is a major improvement and highlight in terms of its appearance and design. We equipped it with a very powerful liquid-cooling system, which is also largely developed in-house."

Another significant change this year: almost half of the robots in the race were autonomous, meaning no human controls were necessary. The bots had everything they needed on board to navigate the course and complete the race, though some manual battery swaps were required along the way.

More than 100 robots entered this year's race, compared to 20 last year — but as you can see from the video below, not all of them successfully made it to the finish line. In fact, some of them struggled to get over the starting line, showing there's still plenty of room for improvement when it comes to these robot athletes.

Of course, the main aim with these humanoid robots isn't to run races, but to develop them to a stage where they can be as useful as possible — whether that's on an assembly line or in a disaster zone that's too dangerous for a human to head into. Speed and dexterity are crucial for robots in many scenarios.

Reactions online have been mixed: despite the technical prowess on show, many observers are worried about keeping the bots in check. One commentator compares the racing droids to "how the T-1000 ran to catch John Connor" in Terminator 2, while another says "I just want one to clean my house".

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Dave is a freelance tech journalist who has been writing about gadgets, apps and the web for more than two decades. Based out of Stockport, England, on Tech Radar you'll find him covering news, features and reviews, particularly for phones, tablets and wearables. Working to ensure our breaking news coverage is the best in the business over weekends, David also has bylines at Gizmodo, T3, Pop Sci and a few other places besides, as well as being many years editing the likes of PC Explorer and The Hardware Handbook.

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