Amazing video shows a Chinese robot breaking Usain Bolt’s world record at an event!
Usain Bolt’s world record has finally been broken – but not by another person. A Chinese robot did it at the World Humanoid Robot Games!
Bolt is still the fastest man ever, with his amazing 100m record of 9.58 seconds set in Berlin at the World Championships. No sprinter has come close to beating him since then.
But now, technology has changed the game. The second World Humanoid Robot Games took place in Beijing, China, featuring robots competing in 51 different events, from boxing to household chores.
Sprinting was part of the fun, too. On Saturday, humanoid robots raced in a preliminary heat. One robot, called Tiangong Ultra, smashed the world record by running 100m in just 9.39 seconds!
While Tiangong Ultra isn’t as smooth as Bolt, it beat smartphone maker Honor’s Lightning robot near the finish to take the win. Some robots even crashed during the race! Lightning, which also ran faster than Bolt with a time of 9.47 seconds, had to be carried off on a stretcher.
Before the race, Honor’s Lightning ran a super-fast 9.32 seconds in a test, reaching speeds of 14.5 meters per second.
Last year, Tiangong Ultra won the 100m race but at a slower speed of 21.50 seconds. It also won the world’s first humanoid robot half-marathon!
This year’s games included 2,056 robots from 666 teams across 16 countries and six continents over five days. The field is growing fast, powered by advances in artificial intelligence. One company involved, Unitree, is now worth about $50 billion!
There was also a new record in the standing high jump: a robot from X Humanoid cleared 2.88m, beating the human high jump record set by Javier Sotomayor in 1993.
As for Bolt’s 100m record, the closest anyone has come is 9.69 seconds by his fellow Jamaican Yohan Blake and his rival Tyson Gay. US sprinter Justin Gatlin once ran 9.45 seconds on a Japanese TV show, but that race had illegal wind machines helping him.
Bolt retired from athletics in 2017 and tried football, including a short time with Central Coast Mariners in Australia. Recently, he signed up for Wythenshawe Vets, a Sunday League team full of former Premier League players.
So while Bolt still holds the title of fastest man, robots are taking the speed challenge to a whole new level!