Two humanoid robots from China have officially outrun the fastest human sprinter in history, clocking times faster than Usain Bolt’s long-standing 100-meter world record, Yahoo reports.
According to Reuters, Tiangong Ultra completed the 100-meter dash in 9.39 seconds, while Honor’s Lightning crossed the line close behind at 9.47 seconds. Both times beat Bolt’s 9.58-second record, set in 2009 at the World Athletics Championships in Berlin, by 0.19 and 0.11 seconds respectively.
That puts Tiangong Ultra’s average speed at roughly 23.83 mph, just edging past Bolt’s 23.35 mph. The runs took place at the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, an annual event now in its second year.
The achievement is especially notable given the physical challenge of building bipedal robots capable of sprinting, a far more complex engineering task than designing wheeled or four-legged machines. The pace of progress has been striking: Tiangong Ultra also won last year’s 100-meter race, but with a comparatively sluggish time of 21.50 seconds.
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For context, the first official human 100-meter world record was set in 1912 by Donald Lippincott at 10.6 seconds at the Stockholm Olympics, meaning it took nearly a century for humans to shave a little over a second off that mark. These robots cut more than 12 seconds off their own time in just a single year.
Despite the speed, the robots still lack the control and grace of elite human sprinters. Lightning reportedly hit an unofficial 9.32 seconds during practice runs, but neither robot managed a clean finish during the actual race. Shortly after crossing the line, both machines crashed directly into a foam padded wall, with Tiangong Ultra veering off to the right out of frame and Lightning appearing to lose control entirely before toppling to the left.
A third robot, trailing a couple of seconds behind the leaders, attempted to slow itself by sliding forward before ultimately crumpling into the padding as well.
Beyond the 100-meter sprint, the five-day competition features 51 additional events, including boxing, soccer, dancing and various industrial-task challenges. Reuters reports that 2,056 robots from 666 teams registered for this year’s games, representing 16 countries from around the world.
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While humanoid robots still aren’t ready for widespread industrial, commercial or household deployment, competitions like this suggest they’re steadily becoming capable of far more. As for the two fastest robots specifically, they’re unlikely to reach American consumers anytime soon, given the FCC’s current restrictions on foreign-made robotics.
