South African sprint legend hails record-breaking robot

South African sprint legend Wayde van Niekerk has paid tribute to the Chinese robot that outran his 400m record at the ongoing “robot Olympics” in Beijing.

Swinging its hilariously stumpy arms and showing bizarre sprinting form during its history-making dash, Chinese-made biped robot “Tiangong” pulled off the crowd-pleasing result at the 2nd World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing on Sunday. It completed its 400m sprint in 38.15 seconds in the Large Group final, breaking the decade-old human record of 43.03, held by Van Niekerk, by some margin.

Van Niekerk’s iconic world mark, set when he won the 400m gold at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, has stood as almost an unbreakable benchmark of human athleticism.

The South African sprint star was among the many people wowed by the entertaining performance of the Chinese robot, designed and manufactured by Beijing Innovation Center of Humanoid Robotics, or X-Humanoid.

“I just want to take a moment to congratulate your Honor Robotic D1 for just beating that time, and congratulations to you guys,” Van Niekerk said in a video message posted on Chinese social media.

“Tiangong” wasn’t the only record-breaking prototype at the ongoing tournament, set to run through Wednesday, which opened with 2,056 robots from 666 teams, representing 16 countries, competing in 51 events.

“Tiangong Ultra”, another X-Humanoid machine, turned heads on the opening day after it clocked 9.39 seconds in a 100m preliminary heat, beating the human record of 9.58 held by sprinting great Usain Bolt of Jamaica. The result was a sharp improvement from the inaugural games last year, when the 100m race was won in 21.50.

In a standing high jump, a robot cleared 2.88 meters, surpassing the human high-jump record of 2.45m set by Cuba's Javier Sotomayor in 1993, as well as the 0.95m mark set at last year's robot games.

Despite such an impressive series of performances, it might be a while before robotswill replace the real athletes, though.

After their sprints, some failed to slow down in time, or lost all sense of direction, slamming into pads and walls, while others even had to be stretchered away by humans.

The hosting of the games, though, does matter for pushing boundaries of progress in the field of humanoid robotics, according to experts.

Zhao Mingguo, a researcher at Tsinghua University's Department of Automation, said that, just as our sports push the limits of the human body, the humanoid robot games are designed to extend the technological boundaries of smart machines across various scenarios and conditions.

"From 'strings-attached' puppets to autonomous athletes — that's the transformation we've witnessed in just one year," he said.

Retired Chinese tennis legend Zheng Jie said she was left in awe by the fast-progressing robot athletes after hitting a few forehand shots against one of the them during the games’ opening ceremony on Saturday.

"I was truly impressed by the robot's performance today," said Zheng, who, alongside partner Yan Zi, won doubles titles at the Australian Open and Wimbledon in 2006.

"I hope that, in the future, robots can provide customized training for professional athletes and serve as a valuable auxiliary tool."