"Mind-Blowing Robot Games: AI Droids Smash Human Records While Others Meet Hilarious Fates!"

WHEN Usain Bolt became the fastest man on Earth in 2009, he performed that trademark victory pose — stretching out his arm towards adoring fans.

In sharp contrast, — the robot that beat 9.58-second record in the 100m at the weekend — needs to do a bit of work on its celebration.

After crossing the finish line in a blistering 9.39 seconds, it crashed into a padded wall, collapsed on the ground and went to sleep.

Welcome to — part sci-fi fantasy and part knockabout comedy.

, which began on Saturday, has revealed both how far machines have come and how far they have yet to go.

The crowd laughed as some of the ungainly robots smashed into pieces, bumped into each other or fell over.

Others burst into flames and had to be doused down by marshals — a far worse outcome than the false starts or pulled muscles witnessed in the traditional .

But the audience also cheered as the best of the machines surpassed humans in speed and distance, breaking records in the 100m, 400m, 1,500m and high jump.

And for the tech companies taking part — the vast majority of them Chinese — there is fierce rivalry as they jostle to become leaders in a field that is projected to earn vast fortunes.

At last year’s games, androids showed off their and kickboxing skills.

Last week Unitree, based in Hangzhou, launched on the Shanghai stock market to great fanfare.

On its first day of trading, its share value rose more than 460 per cent.

Despite the excitement, at this year’s games there have been plenty of empty seats in the arena, suggesting audiences still prefer to watch human athletes over soulless .

But expert David Levy told The Sun: “The idea of the robot Olympics is a great one because the companies taking part are pushing forward the frontiers of knowledge.

“This is what happened in computer chess — programs got better and better due to championships.

“Although there have been some problems this year with the robots crashing, it is very good for the development of robotics.”

More than 2,000 from 666 teams across the globe are taking part in 51 events at the games, more than double the number that attended last year.

As well as showing off their sporting prowess, the androids are also competing to show how fast they are at such events as Power Tool Assembly and Tweezers Bean Picking, and how dextrous they are at Jenga.

Among the sporting events are tennis, table tennis, football, boxing, gymnastics, tug of war, weightlifting and cheerleading, with probably the most entertaining events being the 100m and 400m obstacles.

Even though the hurdles were far lower than the ones faced by human athletes in the steeplechase, many of the bots still tripped over them.

goal machine can also rest easy in the knowledge that he won’t lose his place to a robot any time soon.

The football bots bumped into each other, swung wildly at the ball and huddled together, though one of the more talented ones did perform jumping “Siuuu” celebration without mishap.

Similarly, the robot boxers would not have troubled late heavyweight legend — although one punch was able to send a droid flying out of the ring.

Where human Olympians might need to worry is in sprint events and the high jump.

After smashing Usain Bolt’s 100m world record by nearly a fifth of a second, Tiangong Ultra broke the decade-old 400m world record set by South Africa’s Wayde van Niekerk at Rio’s Olympic Games.

It finished in 38.16 seconds, beating Wayde’s 43.03 seconds, while lesser competitors strayed into the wrong lane, wobbled about while trying to keep up and fell over before reaching the finish line.

The 1,500m was over in two minutes, 21 seconds, annihilating 1998 record time of three minutes, 26 seconds.

Cuban Javier Sotomayor’s high-jump record of 2.45 metres has stood since 1993, but firm X-Humanoid’s machine smashed that achievement by managing 2.88m.

All these headline-grabbing triumphs were achieved by made in .

More than 90 per cent of the androids competing in the games are from the Communist nation, which leads the world in .

David, author of the book Love And Sex With Robots, warned: “We should be sitting up and taking notice. The Chinese are way ahead in robotics. Development of robotics is expensive and the Chinese Communist Party is making sure all the research universities have the funds to add to the current state of knowledge.”

At the moment the leads the way in and is trying to catch up with China when it comes to robots.

The world’s richest man wants to build massive factories to build his two-legged , which he hopes will become commonplace in people’s homes.

The truth is that the robots on display on the athletics track this week are not likely to replace the likes of Usain Bolt one day — they are there to showcase what these firms’ products can do on the domestic and work front.

In future they will be carrying out domestic chores and replacing jobs, and for that reason the Robot Games also had less spectacular events such as Garden Management, Book Sorting and Powder Weighing.

Even so, rapid improvements in AI are sure to lead to further leaps at next year’s games.

The faster that machines can learn by themselves — which is where AI comes in — the sooner they will be able to replicate human dexterity.

David said: “Any AI can be added to robots to make them more human.”

Except they won’t be making mistakes like we do.

We might be laughing at the bumbling bots right now, but this is a very serious competition.