BEIJING — An autonomous humanoid robot from Honor won a half-marathon race for robots in Beijing on April 19, 2026, receiving the championship under the event's weighted scoring rules. The robot completed the 21-kilometer course in 50 minutes and 26 seconds.

That time was faster than the human world record of about 57 minutes set by Uganda's Jacob Kiplimo in March at the Lisbon road race. The winning robot in last year's inaugural robot half-marathon, held in 2025, finished in 2 hours, 40 minutes and 42 seconds.

A separate remotely-controlled robot from Honor was the first to cross the finish line, in 48 minutes and 19 seconds. The runners-up, also from Honor and using autonomous navigation, finished in about 51 minutes and 53 minutes respectively. About 40% of the robots navigated the course autonomously, while the others were remotely controlled.

One robot fell flat at the start line. Another bumped into a barrier during the race. A robot served as a traffic officer, directing participants with arm gestures and voice.

The number of teams participating in the robot half-marathon increased from 20 in 2025 to more than 100 in 2026. Dozens of Chinese-made humanoid robots competed alongside 12,000 men and women in parallel tracks to avoid collisions.

Beijing's 2026–2030 five-year plan vows to "target the frontiers of science and technology" and includes speeding up the development of products like humanoid robots and their applications.

London-based technology research and advisory group Omdia ranked AGIBOT, Unitree Robotics, and UBTech Robotics Corp. as the only first-tier vendors in its global assessment for general-purpose embodied intelligent robot shipments. The three companies each shipped more than 1,000 units of general-purpose embodied intelligent robots in 2025, and AGIBOT and Unitree Robotics each shipped more than 5,000 units.