On April 19, 2025, twenty-one humanoid robots run against humans in a half-marathon in Beijing, China.

While there were only twenty-one robots, there were a staggering 12,000 human contestants running side by side with the humanoids; except the robots were in a fenced-off lane.

Despite the plentiful complications the robots had during this long race, the first one to reach the finish line completed their race in two hours and 40 minutes. This is a one-hour and 40-minute difference from the first person to reach the finish line, which was in 1 hour and two minutes.

However, a good amount of the robots had malfunction errors as soon as the marathon began. Janis Mackey Frayer, Dawn Liu, and Peter Guo from NBC News state that when the robots grew too tired to continue running in the race, the machine operators were allowed to swap the robots’ batteries or even swap the robots entirely (Janis Mackey Frayer, Dawn Liu and Peter Guo, April 23, 2025). The robots also varied in size, with the smallest one being 2 ½ feet tall and the tallest one being 5 feet and 10 inches.

Although these events may seem trivial, China plans for something bigger in the future. Chris Lau from CNN reports that China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology 2023 policy document claims the humanoids to be a “new frontier in technological competition” (Chris Lau, April 21, 2025). Along with this document, their dreams to increase the production of robot parts became a reality.

Even though there were some difficulties during this event, it still brings curiosity to see if there will be more eccentric AI activities soon.