Beijing Robot Half Marathon Returns With Much Less Embarrassing Results Beijing held its second annual humanoid robot half marathon, and this time it was far less comical than the first. Over 100 robots competed in the 13-mile race, with Honor, the smartphone company, taking first place. Its red robot named Lightning finished in 50 minutes and 26 seconds. That is faster than the human half marathon world record set by Uganda’s Jacob Kiplimo last month. Honor also claimed the other podium spots. According to state media CCTV, all of these robots navigated the course autonomously. This is a huge leap from last year, when the fastest robot, Tiangong Ultra, finished in two hours and 40 minutes. In that inaugural event, many bipedal robots needed human help and suffered silly mishaps, like falling at the starting line. This year was still not perfect. The BBC reported that about 40 percent of the robots ran without human control, while the rest were remote-operated. Even Honor’s robots had a fair number of crashes during the race. Still, the improvement from last year is massive, showing how fast Chinese robotics companies are advancing their technology. The event is becoming a serious test for autonomous movement and stability, even if a few robots still take a tumble.
