Industry
Robot runner handily beats humans in half-marathon, setting new record
A humanoid robot named Lightning, developed by Chinese smartphone maker Honor, completed a 21-kilometer half-marathon in Beijing in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, surpassing the human world record by over
A humanoid robot named Lightning, developed by Chinese smartphone maker Honor, completed a 21-kilometer half-marathon in Beijing in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, surpassing the human world record by over six minutes. The robot outpaced all 12,000 human competitors in the race. This represents significant progress from the previous year, when robot runners fell repeatedly and required over two hours and 40 minutes to finish.
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- At the Beijing half-marathon, several humanoid robots beat human winners by 10+ minutes; a robot made by Honor beat the human world record held by Jacob Kiplimo (Reuters)
- Boston Dynamics’ robot dog now reads gauges and thermometers with Google's AI
Source: Ars Technica | 2026-04-20