A Chinese humanoid robot has run 100 metres in 9.39 seconds, beating the men’s world record held by Jamaican sprinting great Usain Bolt, in a preliminary heat at the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing on Saturday.
Tiangong Ultra, developed by the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, won its heat at the opening of the second edition of the games, organisers said. Its time was faster than the 9.58 seconds recorded by Bolt at the 2009 World Athletics Championships in Berlin.
The race also highlighted the still substantial differences between robotic and human athletic performance. Tiangong Ultra overtook smartphone maker Honor’s Lightning near the finish after falling behind early in the race. Lightning completed the distance in 9.47 seconds, also faster than Bolt’s record.
Neither robot, however, displayed the controlled finish associated with elite human sprinting. Both crashed into a thick mat designed to stop them at the end of the track. Tiangong stumbled wildly into the sidelines, forcing onlookers to move out of the way, while Lightning collapsed to the ground and was carried away on a stretcher.
Despite the chaotic finish, the results represented a dramatic improvement from last year’s inaugural games. Tiangong Ultra won the 100 metres then in 21.50 seconds. The robot also won the world’s first humanoid robot half-marathon, held in Beijing last year.
Earlier on Saturday, Chinese state media reported that Lightning had completed 100 metres in 9.32 seconds during a preparatory test, reaching a peak speed of 14.5 metres per second. Lightning subsequently won this year’s humanoid half-marathon in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, faster than the pace of the elite men’s human world record.
The development of Lightning also illustrates how rapidly robotic design is being altered for competition. The robot stood 169 cm tall and had 95-cm legs during the half-marathon. Researchers later lengthened its legs by 10 cm, bringing them to 1.05 metres, ahead of the games, according to broadcaster CCTV.
The 100 metres is only one of 51 events at the games, which include football, dancing and industrial-task contests. The competition has expanded sharply since its first edition, with this year’s event drawing 2,056 robots from 666 teams across 16 countries and six continents, compared with 280 teams at the inaugural event.
The scale of the competition reflects China’s broader ambitions for humanoid robotics. Beijing has promoted humanoid robots as a strategic emerging industry, while policymakers and companies are betting that advances in artificial intelligence and hardware will accelerate their use in manufacturing, logistics and consumer applications.
Investor enthusiasm has also surged. Earlier this week, shares in Unitree, China’s best-known humanoid robot maker, jumped more than five fold in its Shanghai trading debut, giving the company a market value of about $50 billion.
Held at Beijing’s National Speed Skating Oval, the World Humanoid Robot Games will run through Wednesday, providing a highly visible demonstration of how quickly robotic capabilities are advancing — even as their spectacular speed remains accompanied by very un-human problems of balance, control and stopping.
