- Galbot’s humanoid robots played more than 100 consecutive autonomous tennis rallies at the opening of Beijing’s Second World Humanoid Robot Games.
- The G1 platform learned from about five hours of amateur motion data through a framework called LATENT, which recombines small motion primitives into full strokes.
- At the same games, Tiangong Ultra ran 100 meters in 9.39 seconds, beating Usain Bolt’s 9.58-second record from 2009.
Galbot’s human-like robots kept up over 100 tennis rallies in a row with no human in control.
The run came as the Second World Humanoid Robot Games (WHRG) opened in Beijing, in what the company depicted as the first live autonomous humanoid tennis match.
Five hours of amateur footage taught the G1 to swing
The demonstration comes with a purposefully loaded label from Beijing Galaxy General Robot Co. It’s calling the run tennis’s “AstraTennis moment,” a reference to AlphaGo’s 2016 win over Go champion Lee Sedol.
Where AlphaGo mastered a game played on a board, this was a physical contest played on a real court, in real time. Galbot said the rally streak set a record for humanoid robot tennis, and the demonstration was done on a live broadcast.
The game was played at the opening ceremony of the WHRG. This second edition hosted 2,056 machines from 666 teams in 16 countries.
Each robot had to take in the incoming shots and determine whether to play a forehand, backhand, serve, return, or a scrambling recovery shot.
Galbot’s robots also played doubles with human tennis champions. The robots altered their positioning and strategies on the court.
In quick exchanges, when the machines were knocked off-kilter, they righted themselves and stayed in the point.
Galbot’s G1 is the physical platform, a 173 centimeter, 85 kilogram humanoid with a 190 centimeter arm span and a torso lift that protracts its reach to 240 centimeters. Those dimensions were chosen to mimic how a human would cover a court.
Each arm has 7 degrees of freedom and interchangeable end-effectors, including two-finger grippers and 22-degree-of-freedom dexterous hands. Visual and tactile sensors feed the perception system, tracking the ball’s speed, spin and path.
The software, named LATENT, stands for Learning Athletic Humanoid Tennis Skills from Imperfect Human Motion Data.
The framework decomposes tennis into small reusable motion primitives, forehands, backhands, lateral shuffles and crossover steps, and then reassembles them into full strokes. Its selling point, according to Galbot, is that it learns on coarse amateur data.
Researchers amassed about five hours of tennis motion from recreational players using a small rig. They then employed reinforcement learning and large-scale simulation to train the robot to pick and mix the right motions.
Tiangong Ultra ran 9.39 seconds, Bolt ran 9.58
Cryptopolitan reported that a headless humanoid named Tiangong Ultra, built by the government-backed Beijing Innovation Center of Humanoid Robotics, ran a 100-meter sprint in 9.39 seconds. That bettered the 9.58 seconds Usain Bolt set in 2009.
The same model then completed a 400-meter dash in an adjusted time of 38.15 seconds.
Cryptopolitan reported that some of the runners failed to start or moved at a walking pace, while one of the boxing robots fell into the ropes and remained still until people carried it away.
At the Beijing venue, one retiree said the sprints were “just a competition of speed. It’s not a test of intelligence.”
Unitree Robotics claimed its Superman humanoid clocked 12.66 meters per second, although Cryptopolitan noted that those figures are from a company video and there is no independent verification.
WORLD RECORD!
Galbot robot completed 100+ consecutive autonomous tennis rallies with zero mistakes!
🎾 Fully autonomous.
📷 Live Broadcast.A new milestone for humanoid robot tennis! #AstraTennis #EmbodiedAI #HumanoidRobots #WHRG #Galbot https://t.co/W6N1b7pmzx pic.twitter.com/c7uTrX09ES
— Galbot (@GalbotRobotics) August 23, 2026
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FAQs
Who built the robots that completed the tennis rallies?
The machines were built by China's Beijing Galaxy General Robot Co., known as Galbot, and run on the company's G1 humanoid platform.
How many rallies did the robots complete, and where?
Galbot's robots completed more than 100 consecutive autonomous rallies during the opening ceremony of the Second World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing.
What technology let the robots learn to play tennis?
Galbot used a framework called LATENT, which breaks tennis into reusable motion primitives and learns from about five hours of imperfect amateur motion data using reinforcement learning and simulation.
Disclaimer. The information provided is not trading advice. Cryptopolitan.com holds no liability for any investments made based on the information provided on this page. We strongly recommend independent research and/or consultation with a qualified professional before making any investment decisions.
Randa Moses
Randa Moses is an editor and reporter at Cryptopolitan covering tech, AI, robotics, crypto, scams, and hacks. She has worked in the crypto space since 2017. She held roles at Forward Protocol, AmaZix, and Cryptosomniac. Randa holds a degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the University of Bradford.
