A Chinese humanoid robot just beat Usain Bolt's 100 meter world record

[Rashford49]

A humanoid robot named Tiangong Ultra ran the 100 meter dash in 9.39 seconds at the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing this weekend, beating the 9.58 second mark Usain Bolt set at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin. The result came during a preliminary heat rather than a final, and Tiangong Ultra wasn't even the only robot to clear the human record, a separate machine from Chinese smartphone maker Honor called Lightning finished its own heat in 9.47 seconds, also faster than Bolt's mark.

The race itself looked nothing like a normal sprint though. Neither robot had anything resembling Bolt's celebratory flourish at the finish, both machines instead slammed straight into a thick padded mat specifically installed to stop them, since neither has anything close to a human's ability to decelerate gradually. Tiangong reportedly stumbled wildly into the sidelines on impact, forcing nearby spectators to scatter out of the way, and both robots ended up being carried off the track on stretchers afterward.

The games themselves are a genuine spectacle of scale, drawing 666 teams and more than 2,000 individual humanoid robots competing across 51 events, everything from athletics and soccer to more practical tasks like sorting medicine and basic cleaning. That's a 138 percent jump in participating teams compared to the inaugural edition held just last year, when Tiangong Ultra itself won the same 100 meter event in a comparatively pedestrian 21.5 seconds, meaning the winning time in this specific event improved by more than half in just twelve months.

The broader context here is a fast moving, increasingly geopolitical robotics race. The games opened the same week Beijing hosted its 2026 World Robot Conference, where companies showed off roughly 3,000 products including a wide range of humanoids, and the whole event arrives not long after the US Federal Communications Commission announced a ban on imports of new foreign made humanoid robots, citing national security concerns. Not every robot at the games performed as impressively as Tiangong and Lightning either, with several competitors tripping, falling apart mid event, or in at least one reported case catching fire

Chinese robot beats Usain Boltwww.cbsnews.com