Tiangong Ultra Runs 9.39 Seconds in Beijing Robot 100m

Tiangong Ultra completed 100 metres in 9.39 seconds in a preliminary heat at the ongoing World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, according to the reported results. The Chinese humanoid robot’s time was faster than Usain Bolt’s 9.58-second men’s 100m world-record mark.

The run has drawn attention because Bolt’s 9.58 seconds has long stood as one of athletics’ most notable benchmark performances. Tiangong Ultra, developed by the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, was reported to have gone under that time in the robot competition’s preliminary round.

Honor’s Lightning, a humanoid robot from smartphone maker Honor, also finished inside Bolt’s record time in the same race. Lightning was second with a reported 9.47 seconds over 100 metres.

Tiangong Ultra and Lightning go below 10 seconds

The preliminary heat in Beijing featured two reported times below 10 seconds. Tiangong Ultra led the race in 9.39 seconds, while Lightning followed in 9.47 seconds.

Those figures represent a major change from the previous edition of the games. Tiangong Ultra won the 100-metre event last time with a time of 21.50 seconds, meaning its reported 9.39-second effort marked a substantial improvement on its earlier winning performance.

The event forms part of the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, where humanoid machines are competing in races. The reported result places Tiangong Ultra at the centre of discussion around the comparison between robot racing times and the established human athletics record.

Bolt’s 9.58-second mark remains the reference point cited in the report for the men’s 100 metres. Tiangong Ultra’s 9.39 and Lightning’s 9.47 were both recorded in a humanoid robot race rather than a conventional human athletics race.

The source described Tiangong Ultra as a product of the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center. Lightning was identified as being made by Honor, with the two machines first and second in the same 100-metre preliminary heat.

Robot racing results follow Beijing half-marathon report

The 100-metre result followed another reported robot-running performance in Beijing. A humanoid robot named Flash was said to have won the 2026 Beijing E-Town half-marathon in autonomous navigation with a time of 50 minutes and 26 seconds.

Flash was made by Shenzhen Honor Smart Technology Development Co, Ltd, according to the report. It competed alongside amateur runners and was reported to have bettered the cited human half-marathon record of 57 minutes and 20 seconds.

More than 100 teams from China, Germany, France and Brazil took part in that half-marathon alongside human runners. Robots and human participants followed the same 21-kilometre route but used separate lanes for safety.

The half-marathon used remote-control and autonomous-navigation participation formats. For remote-control teams, finishing times were multiplied by a coefficient of 1.2. The report said about 40 per cent of teams used autonomous navigation, and the robot cutoff time was three hours and 40 minutes.

In the human races at the E-Town half-marathon, Zhao Haijie won the men’s event in 1:07:47 and Wang Qiaoxia won the women’s race in 1:18:06. The Beijing events have therefore produced a series of reported race times involving humanoid robots across sprint and distance formats.