Chinese humanoid robots break Usain Bolt's 100-meter sprint record

At the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, machines designed to mimic human locomotion have outrun one of sport's most storied benchmarks. Two Chinese-made robots completed a 100-meter sprint faster than the record Usain Bolt established nearly two decades ago, signaling rapid advances in bipedal robotics.

Record-Breaking Sprints#

Tiangong Ultra, developed by the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, finished the 100-meter race in 9.39 seconds during Saturday's qualifying round—nearly a fifth of a second faster than Bolt's 2009 record of 9.58 seconds. Honor's Lightning model came in second with a time of 9.47 seconds. The same robot also claimed victory in the 400-meter event, crossing in 38.16 seconds and eclipsing Wayde van Niekerk's 2016 human world record by nearly five seconds.

The Robot Olympics#

The games, which began last year, have evolved into a showcase for cutting-edge advances in bipedal movement and coordination. This year's competition assembled over 2,000 robots from 16 countries competing across sprinting, jumping, football, boxing, and other athletic disciplines. The spectacle underscores how rapidly roboticists are closing the gap between machine and human athletic performance.

The Downside: Uncontrolled Finishing#

One quirk of these sprinting machines reveals how far they still lag behind their human counterparts: they cannot reliably stop once accelerated to high speeds. Instead of accepting accolades, the robots collide into cushioned barriers positioned at the end of the track. Videos of the races show the machines crashing forcefully into the pads, with some units sustaining damage severe enough to require transport on stretchers. The unpredictable, jerky movement patterns that allow these robots to achieve such speeds also make them appear unsettlingly mechanical in motion.