{"id":540017,"date":"2026-04-19T21:35:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T21:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/540017\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T21:35:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T21:35:10","slug":"humanoids-outpace-their-masters-in-half-marathon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/540017\/","title":{"rendered":"humanoids outpace their masters in half-marathon"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you wanted to witness the pace of change and acceleration of humanoid robot technology, the half-marathon that snakes its way around Beijing is as good a place to start as any.<\/p>\n

Twelve months ago, the race was a stark illustration that man still had the edge on machine, at least over a dozen or so miles. Many robot contestants struggled to get going, collapsing the moment the starting gun fired, others were stretchered off, most walked, and there were claims that some were so overwhelmed by the exertion that their heads, literally, popped off.<\/p>\n

This year, however, the robots outran their masters.<\/p>\n

Dozens of Chinese-made humanoids showed off their fast-improving athleticism and autonomous navigation skills as they whizzed past human runners on Sunday. While last \u2060year\u2019s champion robot recorded a time of two hours, 40 minutes, this year several of the frontrunner robots beat the professionals. The human race winner finished more than ten minutes after the robot.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe winner flaunts his medalAndy Wong\/AP<\/p>\n

\"TwoLintao Zhang\/Getty ImagesLintao Zhang\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Unlike last year, nearly half of the\u00a0robots navigated the tougher terrain autonomously instead of being directed by remote \u2060control. The\u00a0robots and 12,000 men and women ran \u200bin \u2060parallel tracks to avoid collisions.<\/p>\n

The winning\u00a0robot, developed by the Chinese smartphone brand Honor, finished the race in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, several minutes faster than the half-marathon world record set by the Ugandan runner Jacob Kiplimo in Lisbon last month<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Teams from Honor, a \u2060Huawei spin-off, took the three podium spots, all self-navigated and posting world-record-beating times. Du Xiaodi, an Honor engineer on the winning \u200bteam, said its \u2060robot\u00a0had been in development for a year, fitted with \u200clegs 90 to 95cm (35 to 37in) long to mimic elite human runners and liquid cooling technology used in its smartphones.<\/p>\n

Du said the sector remained in a nascent phase, but he was confident humanoids would eventually reshape many industries, including manufacturing. \u201cRunning faster may not seem meaningful \u200cat first, but it enables technology transfer, for example, into structural reliability and cooling, \u200cand eventually industrial applications,\u201d Du told Reuters.<\/p>\n

\"AA variety of robots ran the raceANDRES MARTINEZ CASARES<\/p>\n

\"ALintao Zhang\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\"AKevin Frayer\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Spectators largely viewed the variety of humanoids of different sizes and gaits on display as evidence of China\u2019s improvements in\u00a0robotics. \u201cThe running posture I saw was really quite impressive. Considering that AI has only been developing for a short time, I\u2019m already very impressed that it can achieve this level of performance,\u201d \u2060Chu Tianqi, 23, an engineering student at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe future will definitely be an AI era. If people don\u2019t know how to use AI now, especially if some are still resistant to it, they will definitely become obsolete.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you wanted to witness the pace of change and acceleration of humanoid robot technology, the half-marathon that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540018,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-540017","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-technology","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540017\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}