By Spooky April 25th 2025 Category: Events.
Beijing held the “world’s very first humanoid half marathon” but instead of putting the humans to shame, participating robots showed off their weaknesses.
Chinese robotics companies have been busy displaying their latest creations like SE01 – a robot that mimics a natural gait – Star1 – the fastest robot in the world, or NEO Gamma – an AI-powered butler. But a recent running competition held in Beijing showed them they still have a way to go. The 2025 Beijing Yizhuang Half Marathon & Humanoid Robot Half Marathon included a special running lanes for the 21 robots registered to participate in what was marketed the world’s very first humanoid half-marathon. The event was meant to demonstrate the enormous progress made by Chinese robotics firms, but according to some media reports, it was a huge failure.
On the 20th of April, at around 7:30 am, 21 robots from Beijing Shanghai Guangzhou and Suzhou set out to complete their official half-marathon. But the dreams of their human handlers quickly turned to dust. Most Chinese media outlets focused only on the positive and reported that the robots participated in the event.
NDTV provided details on how the robots actually performed.
Turns out that some humanoid robotic machines behaved strangely right from the start. They spun in place rather than following the half-marathon course, while others started to fall after a distance of about 80 meters. A viral collage taken during the race shows robots falling and losing their heads as their human escorts scrambled to pick them up.
Some robots started exhibiting signs of dementia, either freezing in place or changing direction and heading for the side of the course, despite their handlers’ best efforts to stop them. Even those that stayed the course were ridiculed because of their snail-like pace, which had human escorts slowly walking behind the robots as scores of human runners passed them by. Even the robot that crossed the finish line needed several stops to have its battery replaced, which suggests that its battery life isn’t fantastic.
“It’s just walking a marathon, can it be considered running?” one person asked on Weibo.
“This event proves that humanoid robots are now used for comedy,” someone else commented.
One thing is for sure, as always, marketing is very different than real life! Humanoid roboots may seem ultra-advanced in edited footage and staged events, but the world’s first humanoid robot half-marathon was proof that the industry still has a lot to work on.
