Our race is run.
A Chinese-built robot comfortably beat the human half-marathon world record Sunday during an annual race in Beijing — although several other humanoid participants malfunctioned and fell around the finish line.
Lightning, the robot developed by the Chinese smartphone company Honor, took just 50 minutes and 26 seconds to complete the 13-mile race, smashing the human record of 57 minutes set last month by Uganda’s Jacob Kiplimo.
The event marked the second year in a row that humanoid runners have been entered in the Beijing half-marathon, with considerably more success this time around.
Last year, the fastest robot took more than two hours and 40 minutes to complete the race.
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This year, dozens of other robots competed alongside the 12,000 human runners, although
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