A Robot Just Beat Bolt

A robot just beat Bolt. Tag the friend who told you this was still years away. This week in Beijing, at the second World Humanoid Robot Games, a two legged robot ran one hundred meters in nine point three nine seconds. The human world record, set by Usain Bolt in two thousand nine, is nine point five eight.

Imagine standing at the side of that track. The thing in the starting position has no face and no lungs. It does not get nervous. The signal goes, and it is simply gone, arms driving, feet hitting the track in a rhythm that never changes because nothing about it gets tired. A second machine ran the distance in nine point four seven, so it was not luck.

The games were big. More than two thousand robots came, from over six hundred teams, competing in dozens of events. It is worth being honest about what this is and is not. A sprinting robot on a flat clean track is a very different problem from a robot walking down your stairs carrying a cup of tea. Bolt did it on human legs, once, and we are still talking about it seventeen years later.