China’s Tiangong Ultra robot runs 100m in 8.86 seconds

China's Tiangong Ultra humanoid robot ran 100 meters in 8.86 seconds during a semifinal at the 2nd World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing on Tuesday, smashing its own opening-day record of 9.39 seconds and widening the gap over the 9.58-second men's world record set by Usain Bolt in 2009.reuters+1

The robot, developed by the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Centre, completed the sprint before crashing into a padded wall, falling to the ground and emitting sparks — a vivid reminder that while these machines can outrun any human, they still cannot stop on their own.straitstimes+1

From 21 Seconds to Sub-9 in One Year

The achievement caps a remarkable arc of improvement. At the inaugural World Humanoid Robot Games in 2025, Tiangong Ultra won the 100 meters in 21.50 seconds. On Saturday's opening day this year, it clocked 9.39 seconds, already faster than Bolt. By Tuesday's semifinal, it had shaved another half-second off that time.ntvkenya+1

The Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Centre said Tiangong Ultra underwent hardware and software upgrades for the 2026 games, including lighter joints, a streamlined frame, and autonomous navigation based on map positioning rather than track-line following. The centre said its Tiangong robots have now beaten four human world records, including the 400m (38.15 seconds) and the 1,500m (2 minutes 21.64 seconds).straitstimes+1

Speed Solved, Utility Still Distant

The five-day games, held at Beijing's National Speed Skating Oval, drew 2,056 robots from 666 teams across 16 countries competing in 51 events including football, table tennis, and industrial tasks. But while sprinting records fell, robots elsewhere at the games struggled with basic manipulation — picking up beans with tweezers, opening jars — illustrating what roboticists call Moravec's paradox.gizmodo+2

"Most of the sports the humanoids are doing don't directly translate into utility for many of the mundane tasks people are trying to get humanoids to perform," said Michael Milford, director of the robotics centre at Queensland University of Technology.nytimes

China has designated humanoid robots a strategic emerging industry. Shares in Unitree, one of the country's best-known humanoid robot makers, surged more than 460 percent in their Shanghai Stock Exchange debut last week, giving the company a market value of roughly $50 billion. Meanwhile, XPeng's ↗ 6.67% robotics division recently raised more than $900 million at a $6.3 billion valuation.wionews+2

Alan Fern, a robotics professor at Oregon State University whose team set the Guinness record for bipedal robot sprinting in 2022 at 24.73 seconds, called the progress "an enormous achievement" but noted that incremental running improvements relate mostly to better hardware rather than broader technological breakthroughs.nytimes

"Beating Usain Bolt does not mean that the robot has surpassed humans at locomotion in any general sense," he said.nytimes