Chinese Humanoid Robot Breaks Usain Bolt's 100-Meter World Record in 9.39 Seconds

A few meters after crossing the finish line in a blistering 9.39 seconds, the world's fastest humanoid robot slammed directly into a thick foam wall. It had just shattered Usain Bolt's legendary 100-meter dash record, but it had absolutely no idea how to stop.[1]

The spectacle unfolded this weekend at the second annual World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, an Olympic-style event designed to push the physical limits of bipedal machines.[1][3]

Tiangong Ultra, a headless, white-paneled robot developed by the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, clocked the record-breaking sprint during a preliminary heat.[1]

It was closely followed by "Lightning," a humanoid built by Chinese smartphone manufacturer Honor, which crossed the line in 9.47 seconds.[1]

Both machines comfortably eclipsed the 9.58-second human world record set by Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt at the 2009 World Athletics Championships in Berlin.[2][4]

For robotics engineers, the raw speed is less surprising than the year-over-year rate of improvement.[5]

At the inaugural World Humanoid Robot Games in 2025, the winning time for the 100-meter dash was a sluggish 21.50 seconds.[1][3]

Cutting that time by more than half in a single year highlights the massive influx of capital and engineering talent currently flooding into China's robotics sector.[5]

However, the chaotic finish lines reveal the current limitations of embodied artificial intelligence.[1][5]

Running in a straight line on a perfectly flat, predictable arena surface is a relatively straightforward physics problem. It requires powerful actuators and rapid balance calculations, but it does not require complex decision-making.[5]

Decelerating safely, navigating uneven terrain, or performing fine motor tasks like folding laundry remain exponentially more difficult for a machine than running fast.[5]

The robots competing in Beijing were heavily optimized for single metrics. Honor's Lightning, for example, reportedly had its mechanical legs lengthened by 10 centimeters specifically to increase its stride length for the sprint.[5]

Despite the caveats, the event serves a vital engineering purpose. Pushing robots to sprint at peak speeds acts as an extreme stress test for battery management, thermal dissipation, and joint durability.[5]

The hardware breakthroughs achieved on the track will eventually trickle down to general-purpose robots designed to work alongside humans in factories, hospitals, and homes.[5]