The humanoid robot beat the human record at the half marathon on April 19, 2026 in Beijing, where the humanoid robot Lightning ran 21 kilometers in 50 minutes and 26 seconds. The human world record, set by Ugandan Jacob Kiplimo in Lisbon a month earlier, is 56 minutes and 42 seconds. The robot thus beat the human by almost seven minutes.
The number raises eyebrows, but there is a story behind it that is much deeper than the naked superiority of machines at specific tasks (which we are already used to, after all). What actually happened icon-expand Lightning is a bipedal (with two legs) robot developed by the Chinese manufacturer Honor, the same company that sells a range of smartphones. He ran the Beijing E-Town Half Marathon, where 12,000 people took part.
Topics: #robot #humanoid #human
