Humanoid Robot Shatters Bolt's 100m Record at Beijing Games
A humanoid robot named Tiangong Ultra ran the 100 meters in 8.84 seconds at the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, surpassing Usain Bolt's human world record of 9.58 seconds. Two other robots also posted times under Bolt's mark earlier in the competition. The same robot model previously won the first humanoid half marathon in 2025.
The Tiangong Ultra, built by the Beijing Innovation Center of Humanoid Robotics, posted its winning time on the final day of the 2026 World Humanoid Robot Games. Earlier in the competition, two other robots had already dipped below Bolt's 9.58-second mark with runs of 8.86 and 9.39 seconds, making Wednesday's result the third sub-Bolt performance of the event.
The same robot platform previously completed the world's first humanoid half marathon in April 2025, finishing the 13-mile course in two hours and 40 minutes. By April 2026, a robot from Chinese smartphone maker Honor had lowered that half-marathon mark to 50 minutes and 26 seconds, also beating the human record. The Beijing Games also included robot competitions in football, table tennis, and firefighting tasks.
This milestone could reshape how the public perceives athletic achievement, blurring the line between human physical limits and machine capability. Sports fans may begin questioning whether records should remain human-only categories, while robotics researchers could see this as validation of rapid engineering progress. The event may also influence how future competitions are organized, potentially creating separate divisions for human and robotic athletes.