Pakistan has placed its capital Islamabad and the neighboring garrison city of Rawalpindi on high security alert ahead of the expected second round of U.S.-Iran talks.
After a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III transport aircraft landed at the Nur Khan Airbase in Rawalpindi on Sunday, two sources in Pakistan told local media that new negotiations between the United States and Iran are likely to take place before next Friday.
According to police sources, some 20,000 police personnel, supported by hundreds of elite commandos, including snipers, have been deployed on security duty across the twin cities.
Additional Punjab Highway Patrol, Dolphin Force and Quick Response Unit teams have also been placed on alert, while Safe City cameras and rooftop snipers are maintaining round-the-clock surveillance.
Similar arrangements were made before the first round of peace talks between the United States and Iran, aimed at easing recent hostilities in the Middle East.
Sources say advance teams from the United States, including security personnel, have arrived in Islamabad to coordinate arrangements for the expected talks.
Authorities have also suspended all public and goods transport in Rawalpindi and Islamabad as part of the security plan, while most entry points to the Red Zone have been sealed.
Major hotels, including the Serena Hotel and Marriott Hotel, have asked guests to vacate after the government requisitioned the properties for the talks, while hostels and guest houses in the capital were directed to close until further notice.
Pakistan tightens security ahead of expected US-Iran talks
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
