Posted on 08/23/2026 4:18:24 PM PDT by lasereye
A robot ran the 100m in 9.32 seconds at the World Humanoid Robot Games on Saturday, beating Usain Bolt’s record. The machine reached a peak velocity of 14.5 meters per second during a test run before running face-first into a wall.
The robot, named Lightning and developed by Chinese smartphone manufacturer Honor, outran Bolt’s 9.58-second record set 17 years ago at the World Athletics Championship. The red and black humanoid also won the Beijing half marathon in April in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, surpassing the men’s world record set by Uganda’s Jacob Kiplimo earlier this year. Researchers later increased its leg length by 4 inches ahead of the World Humanoid Robot Games.
This new 100m record follows a robot named Superman reaching a maximum velocity of 12.66 meters per second in a demonstration on Tuesday. More than 2,000 humanoid robots are participating in the World Humanoid Robot Games. Other events include boxing, table tennis, and football.
The World Humanoid Robot Games run over five days and include 51 events and over 1,000 competitions. The event is now in its second year and takes place in the National Speed Skating Oval built for the 2022 Winter Olympics. It coincided with the 2026 World Robot Conference that showcased around 3,000 products, including robots.
Experts say humanoid robots are still mostly used for demonstrations, performances, and research. Some spectators at the World Humanoid Robot Games said they were excited about the humanoid robots’ “quickly improving abilities.”
The US Federal Communications Commission meanwhile announced a ban on imports of new foreign-made humanoid robots last month. The FCC cited “national security” in a move that directly targeted China. The Pentagon also added Unitree, one of China’s leading humanoid robot makers, to its list of companies that have ties with the Chinese military.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
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Dang, I won’t be outrunning any AI bots it looks like.
Just find a wall. They will run into it. home free.
I think I saw that on the Jetsons.
12ga 00 buck to the groin, not the head, ought to slow them down.
I doubt C-3P0 would gladly donate circuits or gears to help with repairs.
She has no excuse. She’s not a robot.
Spacely Sprockets?
Please keep in mind that these Chinese robots are essentially radio-controlled toys. If you look closely at the Youtube videos, there are people on the infield using radio controllers to activate and steer the robots. These performances are simply PR to make Westerners think the Chinese are miles ahead.
Please keep in mind that these Chinese robots are essentially radio-controlled toys. If you look closely at the Youtube videos, there are people on the infield using radio controllers to activate and steer the robots. These performances are simply PR to make Westerners think the Chinese are miles ahead.
You have a link to a video?
Some are R/C, others, such as the soccer are outright fakes.
LIVE: World Humanoid Robot Games in China
If you watch the soccer game, or the MMA fight, and Tai Chi demo, in the above video, you can see these are people in green-screen pretending to be robots.
Anyone who believes these are real autonomous robots is being punked by the Chi-coms.
Stop, Forrestbot, stop!
They are not robots! They are remote control units, somebody nearby is using a handheld RC Controller! Why do so many people are so dumb to not know this!
The Chinese robotics companies are producing a ton of cheap, and yes, janky robots that are nowhere near the current capabilities of, say, Boston Dynamics products.
But I think it’s a mistake to rule them out, for a bunch of reasons, not the least of which is that they’ve been reverse engineering the state of the art western products and are iterating rapidly.
Their progress with open-source LLM’s is a particularly visible example of how they can leverage genuine creativity and indistrial espionage to rapidly close technology gaps.
That link is the live feed.
Note to self. Stay close to walls.
It was streamed 14 hours ago and is of a fixed length.
FWIW, here's an article that reveals the details about the sprint race being fully autonomous instead of R/C.
("The 2026 edition marks a critical qualitative leap: all 100m sprint events are now fully autonomous (no human teleoperation)..."
This explains why the robots are running into walls and electrical boxes at the end of the run, instead of following the lines on the track.
This means that everything else you're seeing is, either faked using a green screen, or done with a human in control of the robot.
IOW, the chi-coms are attempting to punk everyone into thinking their robotics programs are extremely advanced.
Those inscrutable Chinese...
Because so many people have not been taught to use critical thinking skills. Just the opposite.
They've been conditioned to believe that what they see on film or video is real.
A $50 RC car can beat that.
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