Half Marathon "Runs into" 1 hour, humanoid robots collectively accelerate

On April 19, at the 2026 Beijing Yizhuang Half Marathon and Humanoid Robot Half Marathon, humanoid robots began collectively approaching the finishing pace of human runners. During the race, the Glory humanoid robot "Lightning" from the Sun Wukong team won the robot group championship with a time of 50 minutes and 26 seconds. The on-site timing showed that the first human half marathon runner crossed the finish line between approximately 1 hour and 7 minutes to 1 hour and 8 minutes, which means that the humanoid robot champion in this event had already exceeded the finishing time of the human champion by about 17 minutes. "This robot event is not a competition, but a industry roadshow," said Liu Xingliang, director of the DCCI Internet Research Institute. The humanoid robot half marathon also signifies 2026 as an important milestone for the commercial deployment of humanoid robots from research. Compared to the first event, the rules and difficulty of this race have been increased. According to reporters, this year's event introduced a dual mode of "autonomous navigation" and "remote control operation," and ranked them through a weighted unified ranking system; the track integrated over 10 types of terrain, placing higher demands on path planning, dynamic balance, and endurance. About 40% of the teams chose completely autonomous navigation, a significant increase from last year. "This racecourse covers a variety of complex road conditions, placing extreme demands on the movement stability, endurance, and heat dissipation performance of robots, testing the comprehensive strength of humanoid robot technology," an insider from Glory told reporters.