Humanoid Robot Beats Usain Bolt's 100m World Record

The event, now in its second edition, is being staged at the National Speed Skating Oval until 26 August. Organisers registered 2,056 robots entered by 666 teams, and although roughly 96 per cent of those teams are Chinese, competitors come from 16 countries across six continents and will contest 1,301 matches. Of the 50 scheduled events, 30 imitate human sport, including boxing, football, weightlifting, gymnastics and eleven track-and-field disciplines. The remaining 20 are practical work tasks such as bricklaying, assembling power tools, handling packages and folding laundry. Robots operating fully autonomously receive full points, whereas semi-autonomous machines earn only half, an arrangement designed to reward genuine independence rather than remote control. The BBC (the British Broadcasting Corporation) reported that a machine built by the Chinese smartphone manufacturer Honor also lost the sprint, despite the company's claim that it had covered the distance in 9.32 seconds during a test run.

The work-based contests are understood to indicate where humanoid machines will first be deployed commercially. The spectacle nonetheless exposed persistent limitations. Photographs from the venue show one machine catching fire after a 100-metre preliminary race and another falling during the 400 metres, echoing an incident in April when a robot rehearsing for a humanoid half-marathon fell at the starting line and shattered. This year's programme deliberately excludes stairs, ladders, uneven ground and tasks requiring humans and robots to cooperate. Separate claims made for a Chinese prototype nicknamed Superman, said to have reached 12.66 metres per second, remain independently unverified.