São Paulo's nature reserves have been severely impacted by devastating wildfires, with many animals suffering burns and requiring urgent care.
The forest fires in São Paulo, Brazil, have ravaged vast areas of nature reserves. As official reports, more than 9,700 hectares have been destroyed as of Oct 9.
The fires have created a dire situation for the local wildlife, forcing many animals out of their natural habitats. Some of these animals have been transported to recovery centers for treatment.
At the São Bento Mountain Recovery Center, one of the 26 centers in the region, staff have been overwhelmed by the influx of injured animals.
According to a center representative, between Aug 24 and Oct 8, the center has received 31 animals affected by the fire, which is an unprecedented number in such a short period.
Upon arrival, the animals are often in weak health, suffering from severe burns, dehydration, and malnutrition. Specialists created personalized recovery plans to help the animals regain strength and weight.
The rehabilitation process is delicate, as each species has unique needs. Experts carefully select the release sites based on the animal's habits and the environment that best suits its survival.
As wildfires continue to pose a threat to the region, the São Paulo state government has urged citizens to contact local fire and environmental authorities if they encounter injured wildlife.
Wildfire in Sao Paulo's reserve causes massive burns of animals
Honor's humanoid robot, Lightning, which swept the 2026 Beijing E-Town Humanoid Robot Half-Marathon on Sunday, is a natural extension of years of accumulation in consumer electronics technology, said its developers.
A leading smart device provider in China, Honor independently developed the model, which dominated the podium at the event as it was used by all three teams whose autonomous navigating robots ran the fastest times.
At the Honor factory in Pingshan District in Shenzhen City, south China's Guangdong Province, where robotics engineers developed Lightning. They said the robot's body design incorporates a simulation system that, through artificial intelligence algorithms, can iterate nearly 30,000 design schemes of varying sizes over three months. Complete and mature systems are also in place for battery, communication, and reliability verification.
"We built a simulation lab from scratch. For the robots, we digitize the entire design and put it into a computer. We have our own material library, which can meet the force, thermal, and chemical property demands for each component, under different environments and speeds. We've accumulated about 1000 kinds of materials. For example, if there's a risk with the robot's neck, we just need to change the material code from 001 to 002. Now, through our simulations, we only need one day to perform parallel calculations on 10 different designs, before creating a mold and verifying it in the lab," said Li Zheng, a senior engineer at Honor.
An autonomous robot capable of completing a half-marathon involves a complete industry chain, with core components including high-precision sensors, LiDAR, motors, operating systems, and control algorithms. The development of robotic marathoners have driven an increasing number of component enterprises to get involved.
Manifold, a tech firm established by newly-graduated PhDs, has developed a 3D spatial memory module, which can model an environment in real time and transform it into images that robots can understand. They said several robots running the half-marathon this year adopted their solution.
"Our device can operate within a one-kilometer tunnel with an error margin of only tens of centimeters. For robots, especially in the absence of GPS, this allows them to accurately determine their location. The underlying technology is a multi-sensor fusion technology that we developed in-house," said Qin Youming, CEO and founder of Manifold.
The Beijing Humanoid Robotics Innovation Center set up a training camp for the marathon event. Many university students came a month ahead of the event to develop and debug their technologies and algorithms based on open-source robot bodies, databases, and training platforms.
"These high-quality databases and highly open-source control algorithms are actually very helpful to us. We no longer need to build the house from the ground up, but can skip the most basic part," said Sun Jingyu, a student from Shandong University.
"Through this racing event, I believe we can make our robots more reliable and stable, while also supporting high-dynamic, high-load movements. This is crucial for robots' future application in both industrial, commercial and domestic scenarios," said Guo Yijie, head of the innovative humanoid department and the Marathon project of Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center.
Engineers share development story behind Beijing humanoid half-marathon champion model
