Robot named Lightning blows past human runners to set half-marathon record in Beijing
Swipe side to side, Jacob Kiplimo. He remains the world’s fastest man in the half marathon, but the Ugandan’s record time of 57 minutes and 20 seconds was erased by a 1.80-metre-tall humanoid robot called Lightning on Sunday in Beijing.
Lightning was one of more than 100 working robots 13.1 mile race In the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Zone (aka Beijing E-Town). Despite many crashing into or crashing into the robot brothers, Lightning escaped any serious mishap and I crossed the finish line In 50 minutes and 26 seconds.
That’s 6 minutes and 54 seconds faster than the target Kiplimo set in Lisbon last month, or about the time it takes to soft-boil an egg to pudding-like perfection. He was also more than 10 minutes faster than the 12,000 men and women who ran the Beijing race in separate parallel lanes.
Lightning – bright red and designed by the Chinese smartphone brand Honor – crashed into a barricade and toppled over, but the robot got back to its feet with human help and propelled its meter-long legs to victory.
This was the second year of the race. In 2025, many mechanical competitors overheated and crashed. Only six of 21 completed the course. Yildirim was almost three times faster than last year’s winner, who finished in 2 hours 40 minutes 42 seconds.
Rules “optimized” this year According to the Beijing City website, inputs are operated by autonomous navigation or remote control. Lightning was driven by autonomous navigation.
Added Best Durability, Best Walking, Best Design and Best Perception awards.
The race was also much more impressive than the first race around the world. Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing. In the three-day August event, approximately 300 teams from 16 countries competed in football and kickboxing as well as athletics.
New York Times During football matches, “child-sized robots tripped over each other and fell to the ground like dominoes” and one robot overthrown A human staff member during a running event.
A year later, the city of Beijing called Sunday’s race “a major step forward for the robotics industry – accelerating the transition of humanoid robots from the laboratory to large-scale, real-world application.”
Zhao Haijie, 29, ran the fastest time among humans, finishing in 1 hour 7 minutes 47 seconds. He said the robots in the adjacent lane were actually browsing.
“I felt like it was moving pretty quickly,” Zhao said. Interview with NBC News. “He walked right past me.”
With all due respect to Optimus, Tesla’s last-generation humanoid robot, China appears to be the world leader in robotics. The nonprofit trade group International Federation of Robotics says there are more robots operating in China than in the rest of the world combined. At least 80 humanoid robot companies operate in the country; This figure is five times that of the United States.
Unitree Robotics, one of China’s leading robotics companies, already has a humanoid robot on the market that can walk, dance and perform basic tasks. The cheapest version costs around $6,000.
“The US is the leader in technological innovation, while China stands out in implementation speed,” PK Tseng, an analyst at technology consultancy firm TrendForce, told The Times. “The real turning point will come as humanoid robots move beyond R&D prototypes into large-scale use.”
Would creating the world’s fastest bipedal humanoid robot in the half marathon extend China’s lead in the overall robotics race?
The most practical innovation that Lightning brought to the race was the ports equipped with a liquid cooling system adapted from Honor’s smartphones.
