Humanoid Chinese robots are smashing running records set by humans — including Usain Bolt's sprint

Chinese humanoid robots spent Saturday doing something usually reserved for humans with exceptional legs: breaking their records. At the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, a robot ran 100 meters in 9.39 seconds, faster than Usain Bolt’s 9.58-second world record from 2009. Another cleared 2.88 meters in a standing high jump, topping both the human mark and last year’s best humanoid result at the same event.

The games are being held at the National Speed Skating Oval, the 2022 Winter Olympics venue, and this year’s edition is bigger than a stunt show. The organizer said more than 2,000 humanoid robots are involved, with 51 events and more than 1,000 competitions spread across running, table tennis, soccer, weightlifting and tug of war. Hundreds of robots marched in synchronized formation at the opening, which was as much a demonstration of coordination as it was of speed.

The timing is not subtle. The robot games opened the same week as Beijing’s 2026 World Robot Conference, where companies displayed around 3,000 products, including humanoid robots. China makes most of the world’s humanoid robots, and the country is leaning hard into that fact while the technology race with the U.S. gets louder.

The U.S. has been pushing back. The FCC announced last month that it would ban imports of new foreign-made humanoid robots, citing national security concerns and aiming the move at China. The Pentagon has also added Unitree, one of China’s major humanoid robot makers, to a list of companies it says have ties to the Chinese military. Beijing has rejected those accusations.

For now, the spectacle is still ahead of the real-world use case. Experts say humanoid robots are mostly being used for demonstrations, performances and research, and mass deployment is still some way off. But the crowd at the games seemed happy to watch the future jog, jump and, occasionally, beat the humans at their own events.