Humanoid robots have set a new sprint record at the World Humanoid Robot Games, currently underway in Beijing.
In August 2009, Jamaica’s Usain Bolt broke the 100m world sprint record at the World Athletics Championships in Berlin in a time of 9.58 seconds. Seventeen years later that record has been broken by 0.26 seconds, but not by a human and in quite a different championship. The second World Humanoid Robot Games are taking place from 22 to 26 August 2026 in Beijing’s National Speed Skating Oval, which was originally built for the 2022 Winter Olympics. But for these games, it’s only humanoid robots competing. More than 2,000 of them are participating across 51 events including athletics, table tennis gymnastics, weightlifting and football.While there are 16 countries participating, among them Germany, Japan and the US, the events are very much dominated by Chinese “athletes”. Saturday’s opening ceremony saw hundreds of them march in formation on to the field in a massive display of synchronised...