Photo: Li Hao/GT

The 2nd World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing will close on Wednesday with the 100-meter finals for both large and small group at the National Speed Skating Oval where Tiangong Ultra — which has rewritten the games' 100m mark twice since the opening day — will line up against Honor's "Lightning," the robot that beat the human half-marathon human record in April.
 
In the 100m large-group preliminaries, Tiangong robots fielded by different teams clocked 9.39, 9.34 and 9.32 seconds, respectively, beating the 9.58-second human 100m record held by Jamaican Usain Bolt. 

In the standing high jump demonstration, Beijing's Tiangong Ultra robot cleared 2.8843 meters, also breaking the human record. The following day, the Tiangong team won the 400 meter large-group final in 38.15 seconds with Tiangong Ultra. In Tuesday night's 100 meter dash, Tiangong Ultra made it to 8.86 seconds, the fastest time of the games so far.

Honor arrives at the final with pedigree of a different kind. On April 19, 2026, its "Lightning" robot won the champion of the 2nd Humanoid Robot Half Marathon in Beijing in a net time of 50 minutes 26 seconds, surpassing the 57 minutes 20 seconds human men's world record set by Ugandan runner Jacob Kiplimo in Lisbon in March, with Honor robots sweeping the top three places of the match. 

Honor showed depth in Tuesday's sprint sessions as well: Lightning ran 8.94 seconds in the 100 meter repechage, also inside the human record but narrowly behind Tiangong.

The two machines have already met once at the demonstration at the opening ceremony, and the pattern of that race points to how Wednesday's final may unfold. Guo Yijie, an engineer from the X-Humanoid, Tiangong robot's developer, told the Global Times after the preliminary that Tiangong's start and acceleration are currently slower than Lightning, but its top-end speed is higher, allowing it to close and overtake in the back half of the race. 

The team said that it will keep refining the characteristics the robot showed in that run ahead of the later rounds.

The 2nd WHRG, which opened on Aug 22, have drawn 666 teams and 2,056 robots from 16 countries. Wednesday night's 100m finals will be followed by the closing ceremony. From breaking the human half-marathon record in April to resetting the games' 100m mark twice within five days, China's humanoid robot makers have turned their pace of iteration into a running tally of records.

Global Times