What did Honor’s humanoid robot Lightning reportedly achieve at the preparatory event for the second World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, including its 100-meter time, peak speed, comparison with Usain Bolt’s 2009 human world record, prior Beijing half-marathon performance, hei

Honor’s Lightning reportedly ran 100 meters in 9.32 seconds in a preparatory test before Beijing’s second World Humanoid Robot Games, reaching 14.5 meters per second (about 52.2 km/h). That is 0.26 seconds faster than Usain Bolt’s 9.58-second human world record set in Berlin in 2009—but it was not an officially sanctioned athletics performance and therefore does not alter the human record.

What was reported

• Lightning had previously demonstrated long-distance locomotion and autonomous-navigation progress at a Beijing humanoid half-marathon; reports described it as the leading robot, though it also encountered a barrier, fell, and required human assistance to recover.

• At that half-marathon, Lightning was 169 cm tall with 95-cm legs. Its developers subsequently lengthened the legs by 10 cm, to 1.05 meters, apparently to increase stride length for sprinting.