A humanoid robot that won a half-marathon race for robots in Beijing on Sunday ran faster than the human world record.
The winner from Honor, a Chinese smartphone maker, completed the 21.1-kilometer (13.1-mile) race in 50 minutes, 26 seconds, according to a WeChat post by the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, also known as Beijing E-Town, where the race kicked off.
That was faster than the human world record holder, Uganda's Jacob Kiplimo, who finished the same distance in 57:20 in March at the Lisbon road race.
The performance by the robot marked a significant step forward from last year's inaugural race, when the winning robot finished in 2:40:42.
But the competition, which was held alongside a race for humans, wasn't without hiccups: One robot fell flat at the start line, and another bumped into a barrier.
Spectators were impressed by the robots. Sun Zhigang, who had been in the audience last year, watched Sunday's race with his son.
"I feel enormous changes this year," Sun said. "It's the first time robots have surpassed humans, and that's something I never imagined."
Wang Wen, who came with his family, said robots seemed to have stolen much of the spotlight from human runners in the event.
"The robots' speed far exceeds that of humans," he said. "This may signal the arrival of sort of a new era."
Beijing E-Town said about 40% of the robots navigated the course autonomously, while the others were remotely controlled.
State media outlet Global Times reported that a separate, remotely controlled robot from Honor was the first to cross the finish line in 48:19. But it said the winning one used autonomous navigation and received the championship under the event's weighted scoring rules.
State broadcaster CCTV reported that the runners-up, which were also from Honor and used autonomous navigation, finished the race in about 51 minutes and 53 minutes, respectively. A robot served as a traffic officer to direct the participants with its arm gestures and voice, CCTV added.
London-based technology research and advisory group Omdia recently ranked three Chinese companies -- AGIBOT, Unitree Robotics and UBTech Robotics Corp. -- as the only first-tier vendors in its global assessment for shipment numbers for general-purpose embodied intelligent robots.
They all shipped more than 1,000 units of the robots last year, with the first two companies shipping more than 5,000 units, the report said.