In an enormous leap for humanoid form, a robotic named Lightning outran all its human and robotic rivals on the 2026 Beijing E-City Half Marathon, on April 19, ending in 50:26, quicker than any human — or humanoid — has earlier than.
The humanoid robotic Lightning received the 2026 Beijing E-City Half Marathon in 50:26, nicely quicker than the human half-marathon world report. Lightning operated autonomously and was among the many greater than 300 robots and 12,000 runners collaborating within the occasion. Photograph: Wang Liangyuan/VCG through AP
Lightning and the opposite two robotic podium finishers have been constructed by the Chinese language smartphone and client electronics maker Honor, whose consultant stated in a press convention after the race that the corporate has been making humanoid robots for less than a 12 months and that its work has targeted on adapting applied sciences from different electronics industries into robotics.
This 12 months was the second version of the Beijing E-City Half Marathon, and it reportedly hosted greater than 12,000 people and 300 humanoid robots — on parallel however equal programs. For the people, Zhao Hai-Jie of China received the boys’s race in 1:07:47, whereas Wang Qiao-Zia, additionally of China, received for the ladies in 1:18:06.
If final 12 months’s robotic entrants received hearts and minds within the match-up of people versus humanoid robots, this 12 months’s rivals took that sentiment and ran away with it. Crowds of astounded and impressed onlookers gaped, their smartphones recording, because the mechanical athlete blazed by at a mean tempo of three:50 minutes per mile. To place that in perspective, Jacob Kiplimo (Uganda) and Letesenbet Gidey (Ethiopia), the boys’s and ladies’s half-marathon world report holders, ran 57:20 and 1:02:52, with mere common paces of 4:22 and 4:47 minutes per mile.
Given the performances — or lack thereof — of the humanoid robots within the 2025 occasion, which had a good quantity of pleasure main as much as it, the bounce in robotics know-how is astounding. Lightning was 100 minutes quicker than the 2025 winner, the barrier-breaking, remote-controlled electrical athlete Tiangong Extremely, a startling margin of enchancment. Final 12 months, Tiangong Extremely was the one robotic to make it to the end line below the three:10 cutoff — ending in 2:40 — and solely six of the robotic entries made it to the end line in any respect. This 12 months, Lightning was among the many 40% of robotic entrants working autonomously. The race additionally had a class for remote-controlled robots.
So how did the humanoid robotic turn into such a fantastically quick competitor? Your writer’s intestine feeling is that this superb efficiency seemingly has nothing to do with high-carbohydrate fueling methods, as spilling Coca-Cola on my earlier laptop computer did nothing to hurry up processing occasions or enhance efficiency. What was eye-catching was that this humanoid robotic mainly had no eyes, head, or arms. This implies that if people are going to take competing towards robots extra significantly, we should come to phrases with extra excessive weight-saving methods that will or might not require a go to to a surgeon.
Not all the 300-plus robots reached the end line on the 2026 Beijing E-City Half Marathon, however this 12 months’s robotic performances represented an unimaginable leap ahead in robotics know-how in comparison with the 2025 occasion. Photograph: Yang Yuran/China Information Service/VCG through AP
In actuality, post-race dialogue on the robots’ efficiency enhancements has targeted on the truth that Honor and the opposite top-performing firms applied autonomous and navigation applied sciences from different electronics industries of their robots, whereas final 12 months, the robots have been remotely managed by close by people. Lightning, for instance, seems to have a LiDAR (Gentle Detection and Ranging) system as a substitute of a head, the identical know-how at present used within the autonomous car business to create repeatedly updating scans of the situations surrounding a automobile.
It’s value noting, nevertheless, that up to now, the information of our coveted path races and ultramarathons seem secure from our voltaic counterparts, as their success has been restricted to pavement races they usually haven’t been examined on rugged, mountainous trails. However make no mistake, their huge street operating enhancements in only a 12 months point out that the robots are coming for our information, which implies we have to discover methods to shortly evolve and adapt.
Maybe we have to borrow a web page from the playbook of the bicycle world, which lately has leaned closely into advancing electrical bikes — or e-bikes. The place are e-running footwear with battery-powered carbon plates that ship us flying uphill with galvanic strides? Maybe Nike is aware of what humankind is up towards with their eye-catching Venture Amplify battery-powered footwear system. Or Hypershell with its exoskeleton growth. Our UTMB information may nonetheless be secure for a short time, however who can predict what humanoid-robot-running developments there can be in 2027 and past?
You’ll be able to study extra by watching the occasion’s livestream:
[Editor’s Note: Click here to watch the film on YouTube.]