On April 19, 2026, the Honor Lightning humanoid robot ran a half-marathon in 50 minutes and 26 seconds , beating the human world record by 7 minutes and the best robot time from 2025 by almost two hours. How did they do it? Is there some magical technology or technique that unlocked this performance? How did they beat the significantly better-known Unitree (who reportedly had to supply an ice backpack to try and complete the race without overheating)? My doctoral thesis involved building and controlling hopping and running robots , and since then I’ve tried to design and build efficient commer
Source: IEEE Spectrum — Robotics — read the full report at the original publisher.