{"id":408539,"date":"2026-04-20T16:54:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T16:54:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/408539\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T16:54:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T16:54:07","slug":"humanoid-lightning-robot-smashes-the-half-marathon-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/408539\/","title":{"rendered":"Humanoid \u2018Lightning\u2019 robot smashes the half-marathon record"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">An autonomous scarlet robot named \u201cLightning\u201d finished a 13-mile race in Beijing on Sunday in just 50 minutes and 26 seconds, less than half the time of last year\u2019s fastest robot, which took two hours and 40 minutes. As <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/sports\/humanoid-robots-race-past-humans-beijing-half-marathon-showing-rapid-advances-2026-04-19\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Reuters<\/a> reports, Du Xiaodi, one of the engineers who developed Lightning at smartphone company Honor, said the robot \u201cwas in development for a year, fitted with legs 90 to 95 cm (35 to 37 inches) long to mimic elite human runners and liquid cooling technology used in its smartphones.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">Lightning not only won the half-marathon, beating all 12,000 human runners, but also beat the <a href=\"https:\/\/worldathletics.org\/news\/report\/jacob-kiplimo-half-marathon-world-record-lisbon\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">human world record<\/a> of 57 minutes and 20 seconds, set by Ugandan runner Jacob Kiplimo.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">At <a href=\"http:\/\/nbcnews.com\/news\/world\/china-robots-race-humans-half-marathon-rcna195586\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">last year\u2019s race<\/a>, only six out of 21 robots managed to complete the half-marathon at all, and didn\u2019t come close to winning. A total of <a href=\"http:\/\/globaltimes.cn\/page\/202604\/1359229.shtml\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">300 robots from 102 robot teams<\/a> competed this year and 47 teams finished the race, including 18 teams using autonomous robots and 29 that relied on remote control.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">The fastest human runner this year finished almost 20 minutes behind Lightning, with a time of one hour, seven minutes, and 47 seconds, but no humans made the podium. The three fastest runners <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chinadaily.com.cn\/a\/202604\/19\/WS69e43c9da310d6866eb443d5.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">were all Lightning robots<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">According to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2026\/04\/20\/g-s1-118086\/humanoid-robot-half-marathon\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The Associated Press<\/a>, the second and third place robots were other autonomous Lightning models that finished with times of 51 minutes and 53 minutes, respectively. There was also a remote-controlled Lightning that had the fastest time overall at 48 minutes and 19 seconds, but Chinese outlet <a href=\"https:\/\/www.globaltimes.cn\/page\/202604\/1359229.shtml\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Global Times<\/a> says that due to how race results were weighted for the different categories, the autonomous version of Lightning was given first place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An autonomous scarlet robot named \u201cLightning\u201d finished a 13-mile race in Beijing on Sunday in just 50 minutes&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":408540,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,61,60,43,2367,216,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-408539","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-robot","15":"tag-tech","16":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408539","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=408539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/408540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}