A humanoid robot named TienKung, built by Beijing's Innovation Center for Human Robotics, ran the 100 meters in 9.39 seconds at the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing on August 22, edging past Usain Bolt's 16-year-old human record of 9.58 seconds. In an untimed trial, a robot from smartphone maker Honor clocked an even faster 9.32 seconds, hitting a peak speed of 14.5 meters per second.
The five-day games, partly held at the National Speed Skating Oval built for the 2022 Winter Olympics, drew more than 2,000 robots from 666 teams across 16 countries competing in 51 events, including soccer, table tennis and a high jump in which a robot cleared 2.88 meters, well past Javier Sotomayor's 1993 human record of 2.45 meters. Organizers said the field has "become twice as fast" in a single year.
The spectacle underscores China's push to dominate humanoid robotics, an industry some analysts project could be worth $5 trillion globally by 2050.