Humanoid Robot Beats Usain Bolt's 100m Record in Beijing

A humanoid robot ran the 100 meters in 9.39 seconds at Beijing's National Speed Skating Oval on August 22, beating Usain Bolt's 9.58-second record, per Global Times. Last year's winning robot needed 21.50 seconds for the same distance, so the winning time fell by more than half in a single year.

The robot, fielded by the Tianzhuo team, won by roughly one body length at the opening of the second World Humanoid Robot Games. Global Times also reported a 9.32-second preparatory run, with the robot hitting a peak speed of 14.5 meters per second. CBS News and Bloomberg corroborated the run separately.

The reporting doesn't cover what a sprint requires beyond a straight line. A reaction to the start gun, holding form off blocks built for the event, running on a surface not engineered for a machine. A robot tuned for one straight line at one event is a narrower claim than robots run faster than humans now. That's the headline forming anyway, and the clip is drawing attention: 3,085 upvotes and 481 comments on Reddit's r/singularity.