100 Meters in 9.39 Seconds: Beijing's Robots Undercut Bolt's World Record

In the speed skating oval of the Beijing Winter Olympics, a robot ran the 100 meters in 9.39 seconds on Saturday.

Usain Bolt's world record has stood at 9.58 seconds since 2009.

In the high jump, the same machine cleared 2.88 meters, the human world record has stood at 2.45 meters since 1993.

A State Institute and a Phone Maker

The 9.39 seconds were run by a robot from X-Humanoid, a Beijing innovation center backed by Xiaomi and robot maker UBTech.

At the first edition of the games a year ago, the best high jump was 0.95 meters.

Faster still was a robot from phone maker Honor in a test run before the games: 9.32 seconds, peaking at 14.5 meters per second.

More than 2,000 robots from 16 countries are competing, among them Germany, Japan and the US, across 51 disciplines from sprinting to football.

From the Oval to the Factory Floor

Sprinting and jumping are show disciplines, but they rest on the same parts that decide whether a machine works in a factory: the motors in the joints, the control system and the power on board.

And there the machines are already at work. According to the industry report by China's humanoid committee, Chinese manufacturers shipped more than 40,000 humanoids in the first half, 97% of the global count.

When Phone Makers Build Robots

Honor showed its first humanoid at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in early March, and less than six months later the machine is running the fastest time of these games.

Back in April it won the half marathon in Beijing's Yizhuang district in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, faster than the human world record.

Honor has budgeted $10 billion over five years to turn itself from a phone maker into an AI company.

What the Machines Actually Do in the Factory

At contract manufacturer Longcheer, robots from AgiBot have been loading tablets into test fixtures since April, accurate to the millimeter, and sorting out the ones that fail. By the third quarter, 100 machines are meant to work that line.

UBTech delivers its Walker models to BYD, Foxconn, Geely and FAW-Volkswagen. A year ago these were pilot runs, today the machines stand in live production lines.

For the full year, the industry expects more than 100,000 humanoids to ship, five times the 2025 figure.

The records in the oval are the sales brochure.

FROM THE TEAM

A robot undercutting Bolt's record deserves every bit of the attention it gets.

In our own projects we see something else. Robots and automation are already cutting costs and lifting throughput today, and it is usually the boring machines doing it. No applause, but a business case.

Last week we took the leadership team of a large German group to several robot manufacturers in China. What they saw on those factory floors is in no market report.

If you are looking for the right partners and applications for your plant, write to us.

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