Robot Runs 100m Faster Than Usain Bolt in China... Even Receives 'Yellow Card' in Soccer

The 2nd World Humanoid Robot Sports Festival Kicks Off
Robots Surpass Human Records in Standing High Jump

The second "Robot Sports Festival," where humanoid robots compete in various sports events, was held in China.

According to Yonhap News Agency and China's Xinhua News Agency on the 23rd, the 2nd World Humanoid Robot Sports Festival kicked off the previous afternoon at the National Speed Skating Stadium in Beijing, China. The event will run through the 26th. A total of 666 teams and 2,056 robots from 16 countries are participating, competing in 1,301 matches across 51 events.

Robots are preparing to march at the 2nd World Humanoid Robot Games held on the 22nd at the National Speed Skating Stadium in Beijing, China. Photo by Yonhap News

This year, in addition to events such as track and field, soccer, gymnastics, and martial arts, a wider range of competitions has been added, including tug-of-war, weightlifting, and table tennis. Notably, the 400m, 1,500m, and 4x100m relay races are being held as fully autonomous events, increasing the level of difficulty.

Beyond traditional sports, practical skill competitions simulating real-life scenarios have also been introduced. These include household service, hotel guest greeting, industrial packaging and warehousing, emergency firefighting and rescue, hospital pharmacy tasks, and retail service in large supermarkets. Events requiring fine skills, such as powder measuring, picking up beans with tweezers, and opening bottle caps, are also included in this category.

The first day's 100m sprint preliminaries drew attention when a new record surpassed the human world record. In this preliminary heat, a robot from the Tianzhu team crossed the finish line in 9.39 seconds, outperforming the world record of 9.58 seconds set by Jamaican track athlete Usain Bolt in 2009.

This result is more than 10 seconds faster than the previous record of 21.50 seconds set by Tiangong Ultra, the robot from the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center that won last year's inaugural event.

The organizers explained that even faster times (9.32 seconds, 9.34 seconds, and 9.38 seconds) appeared in pre-opening heats held before the official start of the festival. Foreign media also reported that, in an event match before the opening ceremony, a robot jumped to a height close to 3 meters, surpassing the human world record of 2.45 meters, and vastly exceeding last year's winning record of 95.641 cm.

On the 22nd, robots crossed the 100m finish line at the 2nd World Humanoid Robot Sports Games held at the National Speed Skating Stadium in Beijing, China. Photo by Yonhap News

Meanwhile, the Robot Sports Festival is a comprehensive competition in which robots participate in a range of events simultaneously. The first-ever event was held last year. This year, the number of participating teams increased by 138% and the number of robots has grown fourfold compared to last year.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.