Honor is suddenly at the forefront of humanoid robot technology – it introduced its first model at the MWC and a few months later another one of its robots won the humans vs. robots half marathon.
A half marathon is 21km (13mi) and the 2025 edition was a triumph for Homo sapiens. Only 6 of the 21 participating robots finished, while most stumbled or overheated. And the winning robot took 2 hours and 40 minutes, twice as long as the human winner.
This year, the Honor robot blitzed the distance and finished in only 50 minutes and 26 seconds. This not only beat the winning human participant at this event by more than 10 minutes, but it also smashed the world record of 56 minutes and 42 seconds that was set by Ugandan Jacob Kiplimo last year.
This half marathon is not only a test of the robot’s locomotion and endurance, it’s about navigation too – 40% of the participating robots navigated autonomously (the rest were remote-controlled).
The Honor robots were among those navigating autonomously and they won decisively – one of them got the gold, another won silver and a third got bronze. Tiangong Ultra 2026 and Unitree H1 robots also participated.
China is actively fostering innovation and development in the field of humanoid robots. It is currently trialing various use cases for such robots, including factory workers, home assistants, and even soldiers on the battlefield.