{"id":49326,"date":"2026-04-20T08:11:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T08:11:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/chinas-robot-half-marathon-broke-an-important-record-and-made-for-plenty-of-laughs\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T08:11:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T08:11:11","slug":"chinas-robot-half-marathon-broke-an-important-record-and-made-for-plenty-of-laughs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/chinas-robot-half-marathon-broke-an-important-record-and-made-for-plenty-of-laughs\/","title":{"rendered":"China&#8217;s robot half-marathon broke an important record \u2014 and made for plenty of laughs"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69e5b7693fecbb42897a1921?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Honor robot\"\/><figcaption>\n<p>Lintao Zhang\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>China&#039;s humanoid robot half-marathon produced a record-breaking run.<\/li>\n<li>Still, falls and mishaps during the race drew attention and laughs.<\/li>\n<li>A robot was carried off on a stretcher, while another had engineers in pursuit.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>China once again staged a half-marathon for humanoid robots. It delivered a record \u2014 and plenty of chaos.<\/p>\n<p>A robot from Chinese smartphone and gadget maker Honor clocked 50 minutes and 26 seconds at the event in Beijing on Sunday, according to a WeChat post by the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area.<\/p>\n<p>That time beats the current human half-marathon world record set byUganda&#039;s Jacob Kiplimo, who finished in 57 minutes and 20 seconds last month.<\/p>\n<p>Honor&#039;s robot&#039;s performance is a leap forward from the inaugural race last year, when the fastest robot took 2 hours, 40 minutes, and 42 seconds to finish. Participation also surged from about 20 teams to more than 100 this year.<\/p>\n<p>The race wasn&#039;t just about speed \u2014 it delivered plenty of comic moments. Clips circulating on social media captured the messier side of the half-marathon.<\/p>\n<p>In a video posted on Instagram on Sunday, one robot stumbled at the starting line, crashing face-first and breaking apart on impact. Its limbs were scattered across the track.<\/p>\n<p>Staff rushed in with a stretcher, gathering the pieces in a scene that resembled a first-aid effort.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Helpppp why did they run over and put it on a stretcher im CRYING,&quot; one user wrote in a comment on the Instagram post.<\/p>\n<p>Another Instagram video showed the Honor robot veering into a barricade late in the race. It recovered and kept going to the finish line, while engineers jogged behind, clutching control devices. It made for a good laugh.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Dudes were really trying to keep up with that thing,&quot; a user commented on the post.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>        View this post on Instagram            <\/p>\n<p>A post shared by CHINA MINUTES (@chinaminutes)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>On X, compilations of robots falling and malfunctioning during the marathon went viral. In one video posted by @SilviusBerthold, robots were seen crashing into barricades, collapsing mid-run, and twitching on the track.<\/p>\n<p>China has been racing to develop and deploy humanoid robots, even experimenting with integrating AI agents such as OpenClaw.<\/p>\n<p>In a January earnings call, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that the biggest rivals to Optimus would likely come from China.<\/p>\n<p>Still, mishaps involving Chinese robots have continued to make headlines. In February, a humanoid robot from XPeng flopped face-first during a public showcase. XPeng CEO He Xiaopeng likened the moment to &quot;children learning to walk.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>In another incident earlier this year, a humanoid robot developed by Unitree kicked an engineer in the groin during a test.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lintao Zhang\/Getty Images China&#039;s humanoid robot half-marathon produced a record-breaking run. Still, falls and mishaps during the race drew attention and laughs. A robot was carried off on a stretcher, while another had engineers in pursuit. China once again staged a half-marathon for humanoid robots. It delivered a record \u2014 and plenty of chaos. A [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49327,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-49326","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}