On the evening of August 22, the 2nd World Humanoid Robot Games opened at Beijing's National Speed Skating Oval, known as the "Ice Ribbon." Teams from 16 countries across six continents — 666 teams with 2,056 robots — competed across 51 events and 1,301 matches over five days. The 100m large-division preliminary round, held the night before the opening, already produced the year's most talked-about numbers.
Running Faster Than the World's Fastest Human
The Tien Kung Ultra robot, competing for Team Zhuozhuo, ran the 100 meters in 9.39 seconds, finishing first in its heat and setting a new Games record — 0.19 seconds faster than Usain Bolt's 9.58s men's 100m world record. In the same heat, Team Fenghuo Shandian ran 9.47s and Unitree's team ran 12.41s.
In the standing vertical jump demonstration event, the same Tien Kung Ultra jumped 2.8843 meters (recorded as 288.43 cm). Compared to the 95.641 cm winning mark at last year's inaugural Games, this represents nearly a 3x improvement in the same metric within 12 months.
A Generational Leap, Not a Data Anomaly
Multiple competitive events this year eliminated manual remote control entirely, requiring fully autonomous operation. This means a single robot had to localize and map its environment and complete high-speed running and jumping on unfamiliar surfaces without lane-marking assistance — incomparable to the full support stack (coach, racing shoes, track, starting blocks) behind Bolt's records.
Skeptics in robotics argue that "cars run faster than humans, so robots beating humans isn't a sporting breakthrough." But one industrial fact is hard to ignore: the same fully autonomous robot both sprinted 100 meters and jumped 2.88 meters, indicating that its underlying foundation model + joint actuation + high-speed control now form a transferable capability stack, rather than a single-purpose demo.
Dual Upgrades in Hardware and Algorithms
- The robot's body comes from the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, developed by the Tien Kung team in Beijing E-Town
- Joint configuration optimization and a lightweight, aerodynamic design improved power output
- Algorithms run on the Huisikaiwu platform, with a high-speed running control framework specifically adapted for racing
- The robot abandoned reliance on lane markings, using SLAM-style localization and mapping to run stably while maintaining a humanlike running posture
- 36 humanoid five-finger dexterous hands playing musical instruments
- 80 T2 robots performing formation changes to compose the Games emblem
- 25 Galaxy General Galbot G1 robots demonstrating long-horizon complex tasks in home and retail scenarios
- A Zhiyuan Expedition A3 playing table tennis against Olympic champion Ding Ning
These concrete engineering details make the record more than marketing — it is a verifiable engineering checklist.
Tien Kung, Galbot, and Zhiyuan on the Same Stage
The opening ceremony featured:
The Next Industry Inflection Point
An industry report released alongside WRC 2026 (China Economic Net, 8/22) gave this market picture: 40,000 humanoid robots shipped in China in H1 2026, accounting for 97% of global volume; major companies' combined revenue of 165.5 billion yuan, up 24.5% year-on-year. As the industry's upper end migrates from demos (banquet dancing, launch events) to supermarket and factory roles working 14-hour shifts, the combination of "faster than humans + fully autonomous + same robot" can serve as an early indicator of whether general-purpose embodied intelligence has entered practical use.
The semifinals were held August 25 and finals August 26 — 9.39s is not the endpoint.
One More Detail Worth Noting
Around August 22, Schaeffler, the German precision engineering giant, announced it will begin mass production of humanoid-robot-specific reducers in 2027 — a European supply-chain response to this fully autonomous Games. The "Ice Ribbon moment" on the Asian stage and Europe's "positioning for mass production" landed in the same week, signaling that humanoid robots' whole-system capability leaps and industrialization of core components are happening globally in sync.