Robots beat 100m record set by Usain Bolt

(NewsNation) — Usain Bolt’s 100-meter record has been shattered, sort of.

Two humanoid robots competing at the Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing on Saturday broke Bolt’s 100-meter sprint world record of 9.58 seconds.

Tiangong Ultra won the 100m heat, according to organizers, finishing the race in 9.39 seconds. The robot finished ahead of Lightning, which ran 9.47 seconds.

Bolt, the fastest human on record, set his blazing time at the 2009 World Athletics Championships ​in Berlin.

In a standing high jump, a humanoid robot was able to reach 2.88 meters, well above the 0.95-meter best result by a humanoid in last year’s first edition of the games. It surpassed the human high jump record of 2.45 meters set by Cuba’s Javier Sotomayor in 1993.

The five-day competition, now in its second year, is a spectacle demonstrating China’s rapid progress in advanced robotics as the technology race with the U.S. heats up. The games include 51 events and more than 1,000 competitions taking place, including running, table tennis and soccer.

At Saturday’s opening of the robot games, the organizer and robot makers said that Chinese humanoid robots defeated human world records, as hundreds of humanoid robots marched in formation onto the field in a massive display of synchronized coordination.

The games are taking place in the National Speed Skating Oval built for the 2022 Winter Olympics and opened the same week as Beijing held the 2026 World Robot Conference, where companies showcased around 3,000 products, including humanoid robots.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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