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A robot crosses the finish line of the Beijing E-Town Half Marathon and Humanoid Robot Half Marathon, which takes place in the outskirts of Beijing.
Bild: Keystone
Robots have crossed the finish line ahead of their human competitors for the first time at a half marathon in China. The humanoid "Blitz" didn't even let a fall stop him.
Robots have beaten their human competitors for the first time in a half marathon in China. In Beijing, the remote-controlled version of the humanoid "Blitz" from the team of smartphone manufacturer Honor crossed the finish line first after 48 minutes and 19 seconds, despite a fall shortly before the end, as shown on state television.
However, because the rules for remote-controlled robots add extra time, the time was corrected to around 57 minutes. The winner was therefore another "Blitz" in the autonomous version, which crossed the finish line after 50 minutes and 26 seconds.
The best time of 2 hours, 40 minutes and 42 seconds set by the "Tiangong Ultra" robot last year was therefore significantly beaten. The existing half-marathon world record for a human is 57 minutes and 20 seconds.
The number of development teams from companies and universities was five times higher this year, which is why dozens more humanoids took part in the race. Some crashed on the way or crashed into the boundaries of the race track.
Robots also crashed on the track and had to be replaced.
Bild: Johannes Neudecker/dpa
In China, where the Communist Party is promoting so-called embodied artificial intelligence and wants to bring the country into a leading position, robots have long been seen at trade fairs or in TV gala shows as dancers or boxers in the ring.
A Chinese robot is now also on the loose in Poland. Edward Warchocki, as the humanoid is called, recently drove away wild boar there and made the rounds on the Internet. The robot comes from the company Unitree, a pioneer that German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) visited on his trip to China.
China emphasizes that it is pursuing a "human-centric" approach in the development of artificial intelligence. This means that the technology should help people. But what good are half-marathon running robots?
The robot from smartphone manufacturer Honor was also the fastest in the training run.
Bild: Johannes Neudecker/dpa
Lorenzo Masia from the Technical University of Munich sees this as an important stress test for the robots. "Covering a distance of 21 kilometers requires not only efficient locomotion, but also robustness, energy management, thermal stability and reliable perception and control over longer periods of time," says the Director of the Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence.
Long-duration locomotion forces developers to address key bottlenecks such as battery performance, durability of motor drive units, real-time control and fault tolerance, says Masia.
Humanoid robots that walk long distances are unlikely to be used in everyday life. Liu Xingliang, an expert on China's digital economy, says: "It's not about who can run faster, but who can get closer and closer to useful robots." Liu sees use cases in the service sector or in the home to assist the elderly, or in environments that are dangerous for humans, such as fires or rescue operations.
19.04.2026, 07:31
19.04.2026, 16:39
