Beijing: After breaking the world record set by Usain Bolt in 2009 in the 100 metre sprint, the Tiangong Ultra humanoid robot is now being prepped by its creator Jack Guo to do something much harder: change performance into usability. Tiangong Ultra broke Usain Bolt's 100 meter world record by running the distance in 8.64 seconds at the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing in August, almost a full second faster than Bolt.
TianGong Ultra, developed by the state-backed Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Centre (X-Humanoid), clocked an initial heat time of 9.39 seconds before stunning spectators with a blazing 8.64-second sprint.
"When it started smoothly and got past 50 metres, that was when I finally relaxed," said Guo, who leads development of Ultra and Omni, a smaller model used in 400 meter races, at the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Centre, known as X-Humanoid.
Another robot named Lightning, developed by smartphone maker Honor, clocked a test run of 9.32 seconds and reached a peak speed of 14.5 meters per second
Now the focus is turning towards other kinds of work.
"We want to turn high performance into high reliability and high usability," said Guo. His next goal underscores a harder task facing the industry as it struggles to turn dazzling demonstrations into useful workers.
the immediate challenge is making the robot body and movement system stable and reliable for everyday use. Developing the AI needed for more complex autonomous tasks will take longer.
