Beijing
Chinese humanoid robots broke marks set by humans, including beating Usain Bolt's 100-metre sprint world record, on the opening day of the Olympics-like World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing on Saturday.
More than 2,000 humanoid robots are participating in the event, the organizer said. The five-day games, now in its second year, are a spectacle demonstrating China's rapid progress in advanced robotics as the technology race with the U.S. heats up, with 51 events and more than 1,000 competitions taking place including running, table tennis and soccer.
The games, which are taking place in the National Speed Skating Oval built for the 2022 Winter Olympics, opened the same week that Beijing held the 2026 World Robot Conference, where companies showcased around 3,000 products, including humanoid robots.
China makes the majority of the world's humanoid robots. The U.S. has stepped up scrutiny of robots from the country.
Last month, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission announced a ban on imports of new foreign-made humanoid robots. The FCC cited national security reasons in a move that targeted China. The Pentagon recently also added Unitree, one of China's leading humanoid robot makers, to its list of companies that it deemed to have ties with the Chinese military. Beijing has hit back at the accusations.
Robots Beat Human Half Marathon World Record
At Saturday's opening of the robot games, where hundreds of humanoid robots marched in formation onto the field in a massive display of synchronized coordination, the organizer and robot makers said that Chinese humanoid robots had defeated human world records.
In the 100-metre sprint, a humanoid robot achieved a result of 9.39 seconds, beating the human record of 9.58 seconds set by Jamaica's Bolt in 2009.
In a standing high jump, a humanoid robot was able to reach 2.88 metres, well above the 0.95-metre best result by a humanoid in last year's first edition of the games. It surpassed the human high jump record of 2.45 meters set by Cuba's Javier Sotomayor in 1993.
Both robots were from Beijing-based X-Humanoid.
Before the opening, a humanoid robot from Chinese smartphone company Honor completed a 100-metre sprint in a record of 9.32 seconds during a trial of the games, the company said, at a peak speed of 14.5 metres per second.
Still, experts say humanoid robots are mostly used for demonstrations, performances and research and that it will take time to achieve mass real-world deployment.
This year's robot games - which the organizer said has 16 countries participating, among them Germany, Japan and the U.S. - also include events such as weightlifting and tug-of-war. (Agencies)
