Humanoid robots smash Usain Bolt’s 100-meter record
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- Tiangong Ultra, built by the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, ran the 100m in 9.39 seconds at a Saturday preliminary heat, topping Usain Bolt's 9.58-second mark from 2009.
- Honor-developed Lightning finished second in the same heat at 9.47 seconds.
- Tiangong Ultra also took the 400m in 38.16 seconds, beating Wayde van Niekerk's 2016 world record of 43.03 seconds.
- The World Humanoid Robot Games, launched in 2025, features 2,056 robots from 16 countries competing in sprinting, jumping, football, boxing, and other events.
- Sprinting bots cannot decelerate after the finish line, with multiple robots shown colliding into cushioned walls and broken-off pieces carried away on stretchers.
- Organizers cast the event as a 'robot olympics' designed to showcase advancements in bipedal robot technology.
Why it matters: A humanoid clocking Bolt's distance faster than the human mark is a symbolic benchmark — but the crash-pad finishes show that deceleration, balance, and impact survival remain hard problems. Closing those gaps matters for anyone betting on bipedal robots moving from controlled tracks into workplaces, streets, and homes.
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