A robot takes part in what is billed as the world's first robot half marathon during the Humanoid Robot Half-Marathon held in Beijing on Saturday, April 19, 2025. — AP
Some of China’s best humanoid robots took on the challenge of racing against human marathon runners on April 19. One fell at the starting line. Another’s head fell off and rolled on the ground. And one collapsed and broke into pieces.
In what was billed as the world’s first half-marathon for androids, just four out of 21 robotic runners completed the race in Beijing’s southern tech hub of E-Town within the allotted four hours. The winner was five-foot-ten Tiangong Ultra, who made it to the finish line in two hours and 40 minutes, far behind the hourlong performance of the human gold medalists. It took more than three hours for the other three bots that managed to complete the 13 mile (20.9 kilometer) course to come in.
The man-versus-machine competition was presented as a showcase for China’s ambition in areas from AI to robotics to semiconductors. President Xi Jinping’s government has made the development of the key technologies a priority, ratcheting up trade tension with the US.
Yet the result was often comical, with accidents and dropouts throughout the race. While Tiangong paced around five miles per hour and looked like a proper athlete, many of its robotic peers weren’t designed to run quickly enough to finish the race within the time.
The Tiangong Ultra model was tailor-made for the race by Beijing-based X-Humanoid, a government-backed research institute that also has funding from Xiaomi Corp. and robotics upstart UBTech Robotics Corp Ltd.
"I’m very happy with the results, and everything met my expectations,” X-Humanoid’s Chief Technology Officer Tang Jian said in an interview. "This has been an extreme test of the robots’ resilience and stability. Our hope is that, whatever tasks robots perform in the future, they will be capable of operating around the clock, 24/7.”
Still, it took one fall and three batteries for Tiangong to score the win, with the jersey-sporting machine leading the robot contestants throughout the race. A human instructor – wearing a signaling device on his lower back – ran ahead of the bot for it to mimic his moves. Most of the other androids were controlled with joysticks by human operators running alongside them. Some even had leashes. Two dozen teams crossed the starting line in succession, followed by mini shuttle buses with substitutes and engineers on stand-by.
To qualify for the race, the robots had to have a humanoid appearance and run on two legs. They were allowed to replace batteries mid-race or even have a substitute take over, though with time penalties for each substitute used. Bystanders, including parents with toddlers, cheered them on, and even some of the human contestants paused near the start to take photos of their mechanical counterparts.
The robots varied in appearance, height and weight. One giant contestant resembled Japanese fictional anime bot Gundam, with fans attached around its arms. It lost control and crashed onto the barricade separating the human and robot runners. The only female-looking robot, Huan Huan – equipped with mannequinesque head and Storm Trooper-style armor – collapsed shortly after the start, scattering body armor on the track. Neither recovered to continue the race.
Little Giant, developed by local college students, was the shortest contestant at a mere 75 centimeters (30 inches) high. It paced around 1.4 miles per hour and supported voice control, one of its engineers said in a live broadcast on national television. At one point, the machine paused briefly after smoke spewed out of its head. The team only intended for Little Giant to run the first three miles as it’s too slow, the engineer said.
Jiang Zheyuan, 27-year-old founder of Noetix Robotics, stood on a stool and chanted slogans as he watched his N2 robot come second. Despite many sleepless nights, the race paid off for the Tsinghua dropout’s startup as it helped clients discover the firm, he told reporters at the finishing line. His firm is slated to deliver 700 robots next month at US$6,000 (RM26,444) apiece, a below-market rate.
Another Noetix N2 robot, using a different algorithm, was third to cross the finishing line, but was demoted to fourth having used three substitutes and incurring more than an hour penalty. The team grumbled that the rule had been changed to their disadvantage and said they planned to lodge a complaint.
Some of China’s most promising robotics firms didn’t sign up for the race. Hangzhou-based Unitree put out a statement after its G1 bot fell at the starting line that a client had used the machine without deploying Unitree’s algorithms. The company – whose founder was among Xi’s guests of honor at a prominent meeting with entrepreneurs in February – is busy prepping for a fighting bout, according to the statement. – Bloomberg
Unlock 30% Savings on Ad-Free Access Now!
