Humanoid Robots Run a Half-Marathon in Beijing. Most of Them Fall.

In the first race of its kind, about twenty humanoid robots ran a 13-mile course alongside human runners. One finished in under three hours; many stumbled, overheated, or needed to be carried. The event was equal parts milestone and blooper reel.

Beijing held what it billed as the world's first half-marathon for humanoid robots this weekend, in the city's Yizhuang district. About twenty two-legged robots, built by Chinese companies and universities, set off along a 21-kilometer course — roughly 13 miles — running on the same route as thousands of human participants, though separated from them. Teams of engineers ran alongside their machines, allowed to swap batteries and, in some cases, to steady them.

The winner, a robot called Tiangong Ultra, finished in about two hours and forty minutes — slower than a decent human amateur, and well behind the human race's winner, but a finish. Most of the field did not fare so well. Robots overheated, stumbled, and toppled; one fell at the starting line; several had to be carried or replaced. The footage that spread online was as much comedy as achievement: expensive machines faceplanting on a Beijing street.

That mix is the honest state of humanoid robotics. Getting a two-legged machine to walk at all was a decades-long problem, and getting one to run 13 miles, however clumsily, is real progress that would have been impossible a few years ago. Getting one to do it reliably, without a pit crew, is not close. The event was also a piece of national theater: China has made humanoid robots a strategic priority, and a public race is a way to show — and rally — an industry.

The videos invite laughter, and the laughter is fair. But the thing worth remembering is that the machines finished at all, and that a year's difference in this field has lately meant a lot.