The 2026 Beijing Yizhuang Humanoid Robot Half Marathon will kick off in April, with autonomous navigation and remote control groups established for the first time | The Frontline

Text by | Azhi

A small step for robots is a giant leap for human technological progress.

On December 25th, the Information Office of the Beijing Municipal People's Government held a press conference for the 2026 Beijing Yizhuang Humanoid Robot Half Marathon.

36Kr learned at the press conference that the 2026 Beijing Yizhuang Humanoid Robot Half Marathon will start at 7:30 on April 19th. The Beijing Yizhuang Half Marathon will be held on the same day. The event adopts the "human-robot co-running" mode, where human runners and humanoid robots start at the same time and share the same track, but will be separated by iron horse guards and green belts.

Photo of the press conference site

Liang Liang, the deputy director of the Beijing Economic and Technological Development Area Management Committee, said at the scene that the 2026 Beijing Yizhuang Humanoid Robot Half Marathon will set up an autonomous navigation group and a remote control group. The participating robots in the two groups will compete on the same track using a mixed timing method. It is reported that for the autonomous navigation teams, the official race time plus penalty time will be used as the finishing result, while for the remote control teams, it is tentatively set that the official race time multiplied by a coefficient of 1.2 plus penalty time will be used as the finishing result.

The Key Leap from "Remote Control" to "Autonomy"

Compared with the first humanoid robot half marathon, next year's event will be comprehensively upgraded, including promoting higher-level technological breakthroughs, exploring more extensive application challenges, building a more international competition platform, and providing more comprehensive service guarantees.

In order to promote the key leap of humanoid robots from "remote control" to "autonomy", next year's event will focus on four major directions in terms of technological breakthroughs.

Liang Liang introduced that first, it encourages more autonomy. By applying a coefficient weighting to the results of non-autonomous finishing robot teams and strictly regulating that remote control navigation operators should not get off the vehicle unnecessarily, the rules will guide more robots to complete the race autonomously.

Second, it encourages longer endurance. Participating teams are encouraged to focus on improving energy efficiency, minimizing the frequency of battery replacement, and challenging the limit of long-distance stable operation.

Third, it encourages more human-like features. Robots are promoted to make breakthroughs in bionic hand design, facial expression portrayal, and humanoid gait, making their running more natural and graceful.

Fourth, it encourages stronger adaptability. Robots are guided to perceive in real-time, make quick decisions, and avoid obstacles accurately during high-speed movement, comprehensively improving their adaptability to dynamic environments.

Corresponding to the above technological upgrade directions, next year's Yizhuang Humanoid Robot Half Marathon will also add special awards such as the "Best Endurance Award", "Most Beautiful Gait Award", "Best Design Award", and "Best Perception Award" to guide robots to achieve technological breakthroughs in long endurance, humanization, and dynamic environment adaptation.

In addition to technological guidance, in terms of the competition mode, next year's event will be upgraded to a dual-track competition mode of "speed race + scenario challenge". That is, in addition to the half marathon, the Robot Battler Challenge will be held concurrently.

Liang Liang introduced that the Robot Battler Challenge will be themed on emergency rescue. By simulating various types of rescue scenarios and checkpoints, it will build a professional outdoor training platform integrating three major functions: technical training, event preparation, and science popularization promotion to test the robots' autonomous decision-making, precise control, and continuous operation capabilities in real and complex environments.

The Industrial Transformation Path from "Event" to "Application"

Liang Liang introduced that this event will actively expand the channels for overseas teams to participate and attract humanoid robot teams from different countries and regions.

It is reported that in order to attract and support global top teams to focus on technological research, the Beijing Economic Development Area has officially launched a robot secondary development community covering an area of over 10,000 square meters. Centered on ecological collaboration, it has constructed a full-chain innovation and development model of "professional training + supply-demand matching + concept verification + product trial production + application demonstration". After the registration starts, the robot secondary development community will cooperate with robot-related enterprises and industry experts to jointly set up a training camp for the humanoid robot half marathon.

It is worth noting that the event also sets up order rewards and related support. The champion team will receive a million-level order.

To gather the ecosystem, promote innovation, and popularize applications through the event is the long-term goal of Beijing in hosting the humanoid robot marathon event.

Liang Liang said when answering questions at the scene that the first marathon and sports meeting held this year pointed out the direction for the innovation of the robot industry. Through the competition, relevant enterprises were promoted to speed up the solution of joint stability problems and accelerate the formation of innovative achievements such as algorithms for fast battery replacement and long-distance stable running and group collaborative control. Driven by the publicity of the competition, some enterprises have quickly achieved mass production and the new product order volume has rapidly exceeded 1,000 units.

As an important robot industry cluster area in Beijing, Beijing Yizhuang has established the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, released the "Ten Measures for Embodied Intelligence" special policy, implemented the embodied intelligence social experiment plan, and gathered nearly 300 robot ecosystem enterprises such as Ubtech, Xinghaitu, and Yunji. It is making every effort to promote the construction of a world-class embodied intelligence robot industrial new city.

Relying on the mature robot industry ecosystem in Beijing Yizhuang and guided by actual needs, the Robofuture event system was established to promote the regular layout of "events every month" and accelerate the collaborative breakthrough of robot software and hardware technologies and industrial iteration and upgrading.

Liang Liang said that this event will continue to build a virtuous cycle of "gathering the ecosystem, promoting innovation, and popularizing applications through the event" and strive to become an "accelerator" for the transformation of technological achievements. The winning teams can receive full-factor support from R & D subsidies, priority for settlement to opening of application scenarios. Beijing Yizhuang will take a step forward to connect industrial resources and policy systems, enabling excellent technologies to quickly enter the market and be applied.