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The story
At the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, China, a humanoid robot ran the 100m dash in 9.32 seconds, beating Usain Bolt’s world record of 9.58 seconds. However, after crossing the finish line it failed to decelerate in time, crashed into the safety mat, and caught fire — and on 5ch, the reactions focused less on the record itself and more on the “fiery finish” punchline, along with concerns about future military applications.
Chinese humanoid robot beats Usain Bolt in the 100m with a time of 9.32 seconds… then slams into the mat and catches fire after the finish line
[Beijing — Ryosuke Terunuma] The “World Humanoid Robot Games,” a sporting competition testing the performance of humanoid robots, opened in Beijing on the 22nd. In the men’s 100m preliminary heat, a humanoid robot clocked 9.32 seconds (provisional), surpassing Usain Bolt’s human world record of 9.58 seconds.
(Omitted below — please check the source for the rest of the article)
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Crashes into the mat and catches fire after the finish line
This robot really knows how to land a joke
Funnier than Yoshimoto (Japan's biggest comedy talent agency)
Apparently at a US 155mm artillery shell plant, a robot arm went haywire and sent a shell casing flying
then smashed a self-driving cart and slammed into a wall — instead of catching fire, it just blew a huge hole in the wall
Couldn't make the turn, crashed into the guardrail, and caught fire
Still, China really is fixated on humanoid robots
Vangelis's theme is playing in my head right now
Getting hit by that would hurt — like a real "insurance-scam pedestrian" (someone who deliberately steps in front of vehicles for a payout)
The one that charges at enemies of Her Majesty is the Panjandrum (a WWII British experimental rocket-propelled explosive wheel that famously went out of control)
The one that charges at enemies of General Secretary Xi Jinping is the robot conscript from Re: #1 (i.e., a Chinese army private)
Yeah. Though right now all it can manage is a suicidal "banzai charge."
If this had happened in Japan, people would probably criticize the safety issue from the fire more than praise the good time.
Over there they seem willing to just laugh off both the failure and the safety concerns, which might actually make for a better environment for R&D.
and then they explode at the end on top of that
They'll probably learn to handle rough terrain too
This is Terminator territory, no doubt
And China would rush to put these to military use in no time
Pretty dramatic ending, not bad at all
…oh right, China's currently dealing with a serious demand shortage.
Background and Key Points
The World Humanoid Robot Games is a real Chinese state-backed event, first staged in Beijing in 2025 as a showcase for China’s humanoid-robotics industry, which Beijing has designated a strategic “new productive forces” sector with heavy subsidy support. Usain Bolt’s actual 100m record is 9.58 seconds, set at the 2009 Berlin World Championships — still the benchmark every sprint story measures against, human or otherwise. Framing a robot’s 9.32s as “beating Bolt” makes for a great headline, but competitive humanoid-robot sprints are a young, loosely standardized category: designs, sizes, and assistance mechanisms vary widely between entrants, so it isn’t the apples-to-apples athletic comparison the number implies.
The thread wasn’t really divided on whether the run was impressive — almost everyone treated the fiery crash as the real punchline, riffing on “Chariots of Fire” and Ashita no Joe. The actual split was between posters happy to just laugh off both the failure and the safety scare (with one noting that this permissiveness might be exactly why China’s robotics R&D moves faster than Japan’s more risk-averse culture would allow) versus posters who pivoted straight to unease about battle-ready applications — kamikaze charges, trench warfare, PLA use.
What the thread never engages with is the mundane cause: humanoid robots at speed carry lithium battery packs, and a hard, uncontrolled impact into a fixed barrier is a textbook trigger for thermal runaway — the same failure mode behind e-bike and EV battery fires, not evidence of some exotic new danger unique to this machine.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Science News+) thread “Chinese Humanoid Robot Beats Usain Bolt in the 100m With 9.32 Seconds… Then Crashes Into the Mat and Catches Fire After the Finish Line.”
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