The race has reached a new milestone.
A Chinese-engineered robot outpaced the human half-marathon world record during an annual event held in Beijing on Sunday. While some other robotic contenders stumbled near the finish line, this particular machine had no trouble completing the course.
Dubbed Lightning, the robot—created by Chinese smartphone giant Honor—finished the 13-mile race in an impressive 50 minutes and 26 seconds. This result shattered the previous human record of 57 minutes, set just last month by Uganda’s Jacob Kiplimo.
This marks the second consecutive year that humanoid robots have participated in the Beijing half-marathon, showing significant improvement over last year’s performance.
In the prior event, the fastest robot took over two hours and 40 minutes to complete the run.
During this year’s race, dozens of robots ran alongside 12,000 human participants, although they navigated a separate course to prevent any potential collisions.
Nearly half of the robot runners ran using autonomous navigation, while the others were controlled remotely, according to organizers.
Teams of technicians followed them behind in golf carts, carrying stretchers and wheelchairs to pick up any of the stricken droids.
One robot flipped just 200 feet from the starting line, finishing the race with its upper body held together with packing tape.
Another bot managed to cross the finish line before veering off course and falling straight into a bush.
Pictures showed one robot lying on its side after it, too, toppled over.
Xue Qingheng, whose startup Intercity Technology Co. created one of the robots that completed the half-marathon, admitted the technology isn’t perfect yet.
“Robots today have the body of Mike Tyson but are still missing a brain like Stephen Hawking,” he told reporters in an interview at his company’s studio before the event.
“Once the brain problem is solved, the scope for imagination here is immense,” he said.
The fastest human in the race, 29-year-old Zhao Haijie, took one hour, 7 minutes and 47 seconds.
He said the robots took the lead within the first three miles of the race.
“I felt it was going quite fast. It just whooshed right past me,” he told NBC News of one droid after the race.
With Post wires
