A humanoid robot crossed the finish line of a Beijing half-marathon in 50 minutes and 26 seconds on Sunday, several minutes faster than the human world record set last month. It wasn't a fluke.

Over 100 Chinese-built robots joined the race, and among the fastest robots, several surpassed the winners in the race by about 10 minutes, signalling a significant departure from last year's maiden race when robots took twice as long to complete the route.

This year’s robot race compared with that of last year was difficult to overstate. Last year's winner completed the distance with a time two-and-a-half times that recorded by the winning human runner. This year, the winners on the podium included three robots made by Honour, a Huawei company, all of which operated autonomously with no remote control whatsoever. This year’s teams participating in the race doubled that of last year from 20 to over 100.

Almost half of the robot participants completed the distance autonomously, while last year only very few did so.

The winning machine was developed over a year and engineered specifically to replicate elite human biomechanics. Honour engineer Du Xiaodi said the robot's legs measure 90 to 95 centimetres, proportioned to mimic the stride of a professional distance runner.

It also uses liquid cooling technology drawn from Honour's smartphone division to manage heat during sustained exertion.

"Running faster may not seem meaningful at first, but it enables technology transfer into structural reliability, cooling, and eventually industrial applications," Du said. The performance is intended as proof-of-concept for deployments well beyond athletics.

The audience responded emotionally to this event. Chu Tianqi, a 23-year-old engineering student at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, felt impressed by the way the robots ran. Guo Yukun, aged 11, revealed that he was motivated to learn about robotics after seeing the competition.

© The News International