Tiangong Ultra beat Usain Bolt’s 100-meter record at the World Humanoid Robot Games, finishing in 9.39 seconds, in a result first reported by The Verge. The result puts a robot ahead of Bolt’s 9.58-second mark while the event is designed to showcase bipedal robot technology across competitions involving robots from 16 countries.
Tiangong Ultra was made by the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center and ran the distance in a preliminary heat on Saturday. Honor-developed Lightning followed at 9.47 seconds.
Tiangong Ultra also ran the 400-meter race in 38.16 seconds, beating the 43.03-second world record set by Wayde van Niekerk in 2016.
The games launched in 2025 and are designed to showcase advancements in bipedal bot technology. This year’s event has 2,056 robots from 16 countries, with categories for sprinting, jumping, football, boxing, and more.
The times provide the clean headline; the finishes are less tidy. Watching the models run can be amusing and a little unsettling because of the bizarre way they move to dash so quickly.
Unlike human athletes, these sprinting bots do not typically get a victory lap. Several videos show them colliding with cushioned walls at impressive speeds, after which the robots or pieces of what remains are collected and carried away on a stretcher.
