Tiangong Ultra Runs 100m in 9.39 Seconds at the Humanoid Games
Tiangong Ultra, built by the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center (X-Humanoid), ran 100 meters in 9.39 seconds in a preliminary heat at the World Humanoid Robot Games on Saturday. That is faster than Usain Bolt’s 9.58-second human world record from 2009.
Honor’s Lightning finished the same heat in 9.47 seconds, also under Bolt’s mark. SCMP, citing Reuters, says a Unitree robot came last in that heat at 12.41 seconds. CGTN posted the full race from gun to tape.
The year-over-year cut
Last year’s inaugural games, Tiangong Ultra won the 100 meters in 21.50 seconds. SCMP and Reuters both flag that drop of more than 12 seconds as the useful comparison, not a like-for-like athletics record. Start procedures, timing gear, and how much autonomy sat in the loop are not fully spelled out in the coverage I fetched.
Honor said Lightning had already run 9.32 seconds in a preparatory test, with a peak of 14.5 m/s. The Guardian reports the same test figure and notes Lightning’s legs were lengthened by 10 cm after the April half marathon, when it stood 169 cm with 95 cm legs.
Reuters, covering the Games on Sunday, says another humanoid of the same model as the 100-meter champion ran 400 meters in 39.7 seconds, faster than Wayde van Niekerk’s 43.03-second human record.
AP reports a standing high jump of 2.88 meters by an X-Humanoid machine, above last year’s humanoid best of 0.95 meters and above Javier Sotomayor’s 2.45-meter human record.
The rest of the meet
The Games run through August 26 at Beijing’s National Speed Skating Oval. Reuters lists 51 events: 30 sports, 21 scenario contests. Huawei, a tech partner, says more than 40% require full autonomy.
The less flashy tests are cable connection, EV charging, restaurant work, warehouse loading, and industrial assembly. Lumos Robotics CEO Yu Chao told Reuters running and jumping are not the point:
“Only when it can work in those end scenarios does it have real value. Simply running and jumping does not improve efficiency.”
A Human’s Take
Nine-point-three-nine is a locomotion number, not a factory number. The clip that will stick with me is the foam and the hoist. If you cannot stop, you do not get to work next to people. I care more about whether the same platform can seat a cable on the first try than whether it beats Bolt in a heat with a crash mat.
Sources
- Reuters — Robots can outrun humans, but can they plug in a cable?
- SCMP — Ultra quick: Chinese robots beat Usain Bolt’s 100m world record at Beijing games
- The Guardian — Chinese robot runs 100m sprint quicker than Usain Bolt’s world record
- AP — Chinese humanoid robots smash human records in 100m sprint and high jump
- CGTN — Full race: Chinese humanoid robot runs 100m in 9.39 seconds
- YouTube — CGTN full 100m race