{"id":408098,"date":"2026-04-20T10:53:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T10:53:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/408098\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T10:53:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T10:53:08","slug":"chinas-robot-half-marathon-sets-record-sparks-laughs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/408098\/","title":{"rendered":"China’s Robot Half Marathon Sets Record, Sparks Laughs"},"content":{"rendered":"

China once again staged a half-marathon for humanoid robots. It delivered a record \u2014 and plenty of chaos.<\/p>\n

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A robot from Chinese smartphone and gadget maker Honor clocked 50 minutes and 26 seconds at the event in Beijing on Sunday, according to a WeChat post by the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area.<\/p>\n

That time beats the current human half-marathon world record set by Uganda’s Jacob Kiplimo, who finished in 57 minutes and 20 seconds last month.<\/p>\n

Honor’s robot’s performance is a leap forward from the inaugural race<\/a> last year, when the fastest robot took 2 hours, 40 minutes, and 42 seconds to finish. Participation also surged from about 20 teams to more than 100 this year.<\/p>\n

The race wasn’t just about speed \u2014 it delivered plenty of comic moments<\/a>. Clips circulating on social media captured the messier side of the half-marathon.<\/p>\n

In a video posted on Instagram on Sunday, one robot stumbled at the starting line, crashing face-first<\/a> and breaking apart on impact. Its limbs were scattered across the track.<\/p>\n

Staff rushed in with a stretcher, gathering the pieces in a scene that resembled a first-aid effort.<\/p>\n

“Helpppp why did they run over and put it on a stretcher im CRYING,” one user wrote in a comment on the Instagram post.<\/p>\n

Another Instagram video showed the Honor robot veering into a barricade late in the race. It recovered and kept going to the finish line, while engineers jogged behind, clutching control devices. It made for a good laugh.<\/p>\n

“Dudes were really trying to keep up with that thing,” a user commented on the post.<\/p>\n

On X, compilations of robots falling and malfunctioning during the marathon went viral. In one video posted by @SilviusBerthold, robots were seen crashing into barricades, collapsing mid-run, and twitching on the track.<\/p>\n

China has been racing to develop and deploy humanoid robots, even experimenting with integrating AI agents such as OpenClaw.<\/p>\n

In a January earnings call, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that the biggest rivals to Optimus<\/a> would likely come from China.<\/p>\n

Still, mishaps involving Chinese robots have continued to make headlines. In February, a humanoid robot from XPeng flopped face-first during a public showcase. XPeng CEO He Xiaopeng likened the moment to “children learning to walk.”<\/p>\n

In another incident earlier this year, a humanoid robot developed by Unitree kicked an engineer in the groin during a test.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"China once again staged a half-marathon for humanoid robots. It delivered a record \u2014 and plenty of chaos.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":408099,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,179457,145885,114,179455,179456,318,64062,61,542,60,76214,28980,2367,179453,26641,80,644,179454],"class_list":["post-408098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-barricade","tag-chaos","tag-china","tag-comic-moment","tag-face-first","tag-honor","tag-humanoid-robot","tag-ie","tag-instagram","tag-ireland","tag-minute","tag-plenty","tag-robot","tag-robot-half-marathon","tag-sunday","tag-technology","tag-video","tag-wechat-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408098\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/408099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}