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Benchmark · April 19, 2025

Humanoids run a half-marathon

Twenty teams of humanoid robots ran 21.0975 kilometres in Beijing's Yizhuang district alongside 12,000 human runners. Tiangong Ultra finished first among the robots in 2 hours 40 minutes 42 seconds, with three battery changes.

Why it matters

This is the first measurement of humanoid endurance made by someone other than the manufacturer: a fixed distance, a clock and a field. Two hours forty with three battery changes is a public figure for how far the hardware actually got, though the rules allowed a robot to follow a person or be driven by remote.

Tiangong Ultra was built by the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center (X-Humanoid). By the centre's release the robot followed a pilot by wireless navigation rather than a handheld remote, and had quick-swap batteries. The organiser's rules allowed full autonomy and remote control alike. Operators and engineers accompanied the robots, and supply stations along the course held batteries. The clock did not stop for a battery change, and swapping the robot itself cost a penalty of 10, then 15, then 20 minutes each. Before the race the organiser gave the robots' cut-off as about 3 hours 30 minutes. By the organiser's account six of the twenty teams finished. The men's winner among the runners finished in 1:02:36, 1 hour 38 minutes ahead of the robot. A robot count, a fall by the winner and cooling sprays appear in none of the organiser's or developer's documents.

Event record

Event date
April 19, 2025
Timeline date
Event date
Verification
Sources gathered automatically · September 27, 2026
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ID
evt-0451

The date of the race in Beijing's Yizhuang district, run together with the human half-marathon. It was first set for 13 April; the organiser moved it because of a forecast of extreme wind and a sharp drop in temperature.

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