Robot Olympics 2026: China's Robots Just Broke Human World Records

**Ejaaz** (0:00)
26 years ago, a human athlete ran the 1,500-meter race in three minutes and 26 seconds. And ever since then, the record had never been beaten. We've had seven Olympics, the latest Nike running shoes, and no one has been able to beat it. But over the weekend, a humanoid robot out of China crushed it in two minutes and 21 seconds. This was the World Humanoid Olympics that was hosted in China over five days. And these robots are crushing human-based Olympic events. They ran a faster 100 meter than Usain Bolt, they jumped higher than the Olympic record, and they broke 1500 meter and the 400 meter races. We're talking about 2,000 robots from over 16 countries that competed in 55 Olympic events. These are the same events that humans compete every four years. And the contrast between last year's Robot Olympics and this year's is vastly different. And we're going to get into all of that on today's episode.

**Josh** (0:56)
This is a visual episode where if you're not watching, you're probably going to want to watch these videos because they're insane. This is also a funny episode because one year ago, we actually filmed the first annual Robot Olympics. We're here now for our second annual, pretty much any event on the show.

**Ejaaz** (1:09)
You're around the sun.

**Josh** (1:10)
To talk about this, I mean, dude, just look at the visual that's on screen. This looks like it's AI generated, but it is not AI generated. What we're seeing run across the screen is an army of robots that are perfectly in sync. For this event, the scale is huge. I think the total amount of robots competing is up 300 percent year over year, and the amount of teams is up 200 percent year over year. And the most interesting statistic is 96 percent of all the robots that competed in this Olympics are all Chinese-made. This is the China event. And it's kind of sad because I was looking at humanoid robots from the US and I was like, oh boy, we might just be cooked. So for the records, I'm just going to just list off a couple of them are kind of unbelievable and then we'll get into the videos of how they actually did it. The first is the 100-meter gold. That is like the flagship race that everyone kind of denominates in. And that is the one where Usain Bolt famously is the human world record. He ran it in 9.58 seconds. The robot ran it in 9.39 seconds. And oh my God, look at this video, it's terrifying. Could you imagine a robot running it too that fast?

**Ejaaz** (2:13)
No, and also look how tall these things are. I could have sworn that these robots are meant to be waist height. They were certainly like last year when they were competing. This thing is like 6 foot 3 to 6 foot 5 These things are huge. You see the crash pad over here as well, where they just kind of like slide into it.

**Josh** (2:29)
I find it funny how they crash and they just die. Like they just turn off and then they have to get dragged off in cars.

**Ejaaz** (2:34)
They're coming causing one and done. It's nuts.

**Josh** (2:37)
The next one that was kind of crazy is the standing high jump, which was above the human record. They cleared 2.8 meters, almost 9 meters. The 1500 meter race, the Tiangang Ultra is what they call it, was 2 minutes and 21 seconds against the human world record of 3 minutes and 26 seconds, which was untouched since 1998 And the robot, most interestingly, these aren't human controlled. They ran fully autonomously with zero human intervention. So I think all of these things, as we go through the videos from this event, yeah, here's the robot running 14.5 miles per hour just running into the barricade.
It's the first time that feels scary. And I remember we did this episode a year ago, and I was like, okay, robots are kind of a joke. Like they don't actually look like they are doing anything effective. They're not running that fast. They're kind of falling apart and collapsing. Similar things were happening this year, but we're seeing some serious upgrades year over year. And if we continue this trajectory, even one year in the future, that leaves us with a pretty unnerving reality with how capable these robots are going to be.

**Ejaaz** (3:40)
Yeah. I mean, I remember last year's Olympics. And just so that you guys have an understanding in how advanced these robots have become in a very short period of time, specifically in China.
Last year, the 100-meter time, the winning robot ran it in 21.5 seconds. That's like more than double the world record that Usain Bolt held. And now in less than a year, because it has been less than a year, they crushed Usain Bolt's record. So what's that going to be next year when these robots' arms aren't flailing in a crazy way and they're way more dynamically efficient? They're going to crush it even more. And so I think the realisation that struck to me is, this is, to your point, no longer a joke. The Chinese are very advanced in hardware. We were talking about this before we started recording, but hardware and manufacturing has been their kind of mecca over the last couple of decades at this point. And they have completely beaten the US. When I compare, when I'm looking at the figure robots in the US or any kind of robots, Amazon delivery robots, I'm just like China is way more advanced. And for humanoids specifically, because this is the other thing, right? It's like, why would these events kind of like matter to us at all? It's because they're human looking robots competing in human based events. Like, look, and we're not just talking about, you know, track and field events. We're talking about like football. We're talking about like tennis. Like I think in this one, there's a crazy penalty, Josh. I want to show you this in one second. So a yellow card on the robot. And again, if you're not watching this, I urge you to.