The ‘robot Olympics’ were spectacular – but will this technology end up helping humans?

In the past few days your social media feeds may have been full of videos of humanoid robots sprinting, jumping and performing various incredible (and not so incredible) feats.

This is because the second World Humanoid Robot Games have just finished in Beijing.

It featured many incredible sights, but some of the more mundane events offered more insight into how this technology will eventually help humans.

Robots are now faster than people Commonly referred to as the robot Olympics, this event started last year, when about 500 robots showed off their abilities in 25 events.

This year’s version featured more than 2,000 robots competing in 50 events .

The robots that enter must be so-called humanoid robots: under the games’ rules they need a torso, two arms and two legs, an onboard power source and no trailing cables.

Half of the events are direct copies of the human Olympics and Paralympics: track and field, weightlifting, soccer and boxing.

Just like in the human Olympics, the crowd-pleaser was the 100 metre sprint.

This year, two robots beat Usain Bolt’s world record of 9.58 seconds, with the fastest clocking 9.39 seconds.

The same story played out in the 400m, when one robot finished in 39.7 seconds – the current men’s world record is 43.03 and women’s is 47.60.

Impressive stuff.

But it’s the other 25 events, which are not like the human Olympics and Paralympics, that paint a more interesting picture.

A new kind of competition The list of non-sporting events is very telling in how humanoid robotics is developing, or how manufacturers of the robots hope it will develop.

That list of events includes book sorting, garden management, bricklaying and possibly the most exciting event: tweezer bean picking.