(Yicai) April 20 -- The humanoid robot that won the world's second half-marathon for humanoid robots in Beijing, developed by Chinese smartphone maker Honor, has beaten the record set by human runners by about seven minutes.

Lightening won the 2026 Beijing E-Town humanoid robot half-marathon in 50 minutes and 26 seconds yesterday, beating the human record of 57 minutes and 20 seconds set by Ugandan athlete Kiplimo Jacob in March.

Tiangong Ultra, developed by the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, also known as X-Humanoid, won last year's inaugural half-marathon with a time of two hours, 40 minutes, and 42 seconds, meaning that Lightning ran at more than double the pace yesterday.

Lighting is equipped with a unified joint module independently developed by Honor, with the peak torque of its motor reaching 400 Newton-meters, a test and development engineer at the Shenzhen-based company's robot team told Yicai.

Its liquid cooling system can achieve a heat transfer flow rate of more than four liters per minute through a high-power liquid pump, solving the problem of heat dissipation under high-load motion, the engineer noted, adding that it can adapt in real-time to complex road conditions and control the center of gravity through multi-sensor integration and dynamic motion control algorithms.

This year's track covered a variety of complex road conditions, putting forward extremely high requirements for the robots' motion stability, endurance, and heat dissipation, making it a comprehensive test for androids' technical capabilities, the engineer explained.

There is a technology transfer value behind pursuing the ultimate speed for humanoid robots in a race, the engineer said. In fact, teams can verify the reliability of structures and core capabilities, including liquid cooling, and transfer them to industrial scenarios, which is similar to the automotive industry driving technological progress through car racing, he added.

Honor is planning to bring humanoid robots into its retail stores to aid with sales and services to increase retail efficiency, the engineer revealed.

About 300 robots from more than 100 teams, including Honor, X-Humanoid, Unitree Robotics, and Noetix Robotics, participated in the 21-kilometer race yesterday, with the scale being about five times larger than last year's. The completion rate increased to over 45 percent from around 30 percent.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Futura Costaglione