BEIJING, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Humanoid robot named "Flash" from Shenzhen Honor Smart Technology Development Co., Ltd. claimed victory at the 2026 Beijing E-Town half-marathon with a time of 50 minutes and 26 seconds in autonomous navigation on Sunday, beating the human world record of 57:20.
The men's half-marathon world record was created by Uganda's star distance runner Jacob Kiplimo at the Lisbon Half Marathon in Portugal last month.
At the inaugural E-Town half-marathon in 2025, Tiangong Ultra seized victory in two hours, 40 minutes, and 42 seconds, and only six out of the 20 competing teams successfully finished the 21.0975-kilometer race to make history.
In the second edition of the event on Sunday, humanoid robots made remarkable progress and demonstrated technological breakthroughs to become faster and more stable in running. The number of participating teams increased to more than 100 this year, including participants from Germany, France and Brazil.
In terms of competition rules, robots and human runners followed the same route but separate lanes to ensure safety, and the robot's cutoff time was set at three hours and 40 minutes. The newly added format this year includes two ways of participation - remote control and autonomous navigation.
For teams in remote control, their finishing times need to be multiplied by a coefficient of 1.2. About 40 percent of the teams adopted the autonomous navigation to achieve better results.
"The setting of coefficient aims to guide and encourage the research and development of autonomous navigation, which represents a technological foundation for humanoid robots to be applied in more scenarios in our daily life towards future," explained Liang Liang, deputy secretary-general of the Chinese Institute of Electronics.
On the human's side of E-Town half-marathon, China's Zhao Haijie took the men's title in one hour, seven minutes, and 47 seconds, while his compatriot Wang Qiaoxia was crowned in the women's race with 1:18:06. ■
