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.
The 2026 Humanoid Robot Half Marathon will be comprehensively upgraded. The race is scheduled to start at 7:30 AM on April 19th, coinciding with the Beijing Yizhuang Half Marathon. It will adopt a "human-robot co-running" model, with human runners and humanoid robots starting simultaneously and sharing the same course, but separated by metal barriers or green belts. The humanoid robot half marathon will have autonomous navigation and remote-controlled groups, competing in a mixed timing format.
Themed "Yizhuang First," this year's event starts at Kechuang 17th Street on the shore of Tongming Lake in Yizhuang, Beijing, and finishes at Nanhaizi Park. The course integrates urban main roads, sections of international auto race tracks, and park ecological scenes, seamlessly connecting a high-tech district with a natural ecological space, presenting a future-oriented event that combines technological empowerment, ecological integration, and athletic competition.
The Beijing Yizhuang Half Marathon has become a distinctive brand event in Beijing. In the new year, it will continue to use the Chinese Athletics Association's A1-level event certification as a benchmark to comprehensively improve the event's professionalism and service quality. Efforts will focus on three key areas: First, upgrading digital services by integrating registration, results inquiry, and video download services through an intelligent event management system, making participation easier and more convenient; second, optimizing event quality by implementing a flexible traffic control mechanism to minimize the impact on city operations and adding multiple free shuttle bus routes to provide runners with comprehensive services throughout the race; and third, enhancing the participant experience by setting up unique interactive check-in points and improving the medical emergency and supply network, making the run both safe and warm. Next year, every detail will be refined to accompany every runner through Yizhuang, creating wonderful memories together.
This year's event will strive to create a globally benchmark technological sports event with higher competitive levels, more challenging tasks, wider coverage, and stronger empowering effects through four major improvements:
I. Promoting higher-level technological breakthroughs. Focusing on four key areas: First, encouraging greater autonomy. By weighting the scores of non-autonomous robot teams and strictly regulating that remote control operators should not disembark unless absolutely necessary, the rules guide more robots to achieve autonomous completion. Secondly, longer battery life is encouraged. Participating teams are encouraged to focus on improving energy efficiency, minimizing battery swapping frequency, and challenging the limits of long-distance stable operation. Thirdly, greater human-like design is encouraged. Breakthroughs are being promoted in areas such as bionic hand design, facial expression depiction, and human-like gait, making running more natural and graceful. Fourthly, stronger adaptability is encouraged. Robots are guided to perceive in real-time, make rapid decisions, and accurately avoid obstacles during high-speed movement, comprehensively improving their adaptability to dynamic environments. To this end, innovative awards such as "Best Battery Life Award," "Most Beautiful Gait Award," "Best Design Award," and "Best Perception Award" have been added to guide technological innovation breakthroughs.
II. Exploring broader application challenges. This year's competition will concurrently host a brand-new event—the Robot Baturu Challenge. With emergency rescue as its theme, the challenge will simulate various rescue scenarios and challenges, creating a professional outdoor training and competition platform integrating technical training, competition preparation, and science popularization. It will test robots' autonomous decision-making, precise control, and continuous operation capabilities in real and complex environments, providing high-intensity verification scenarios for core technology breakthroughs and establishing a normalized and professional testing platform for the transformation of technological achievements into practical applications.
III. A more international competition platform will be created. Competition information will be widely publicized, and in-depth connections will be established with universities, research institutes, and enterprises. Leveraging the strong resources and extensive influence of the Chinese Institute of Electronics, efforts will be made to actively expand participation channels for overseas teams, attracting humanoid robot teams from different countries and regions to participate enthusiastically, and striving to build an open, inclusive, and innovative international cooperation and exchange platform. This year's competition will also organize supporting activities such as pre-competition training, testing, investment and financing matchmaking, and visits to science parks, perfecting a virtuous cycle of "building an ecosystem through competition, promoting innovation through competition, and advancing application through competition."
IV. More comprehensive service guarantees will be provided. In terms of resource support, a robot secondary development community of over 10,000 square meters has been launched and is operational, providing participating teams with full-chain support from shared robots and free space to inclusive computing power and development tools. A "Robot Marathon Training Camp" is also organized to assist teams in targeted development. Regarding service optimization, each team is assigned a one-on-one event manager to precisely match communication support services according to their needs, and a unified track mapping map is provided for technical testing. In terms of scenario innovation, a "Robot Service Officer" position has been established for the first time, providing diverse services along the track, such as robot cheerleading, route guidance, litter collection, and interactive performances, helping robots upgrade from "event tools" to "service partners." In terms of transformation and implementation, a fast track from participation to the market is paved for winning teams, providing full-element support from R&D subsidies and implementation space to the opening of application scenarios. The champion team can also receive over one million yuan in industry order rewards, building a seamless fast track connecting "participation-incubation-industry."
