Robotics in Sports: What Robots Can Actually Do Today (2026)

Robots now run half-marathons, sprint past Usain Bolt's record and train human athletes. Here is what is real, what is hype, and where robots end and plain AI begins.

The short answer

Robots show up in sport in three very different roles:

1. Training partners — machines that feed, tackle or rally so human athletes can practise more.
2. Competitors — robots racing, fighting or playing football against other robots, and sometimes next to humans.
3. Officials — the "robot referee" headlines. Most of these are cameras and software, not robots at all.

The first role is quietly useful and already common. The second has made huge jumps in the last two years. The third is mostly a naming mix-up.

Robots as training partners

This is the least flashy role and the most useful one.

A good sparring partner has to do the same thing again and again, at full intensity, without getting tired or hurt. That is exactly what machines are good at.

• Table tennis. Omron's FORPHEUS robot was certified by Guinness World Records in 2016 as the first robot table tennis tutor. It tracks the ball and the player about 80 times a second and adjusts its returns to help the human improve.
• American football. Robotic tackling dummies can move like a ball carrier, so players practise tackling without hitting — or injuring — a teammate.
• Shooting practice. Toyota's basketball robot CUE3 made 2,020 free throws in a row in 2019, a Guinness record. It is not a coach, but it shows how repeatable a machine can be.

In 2024 Google DeepMind went a step further. Its table tennis robot, a robot arm driven by AI, played 29 matches against people it had never met. It won every match against beginners, 55% against intermediate players, and none against advanced players. DeepMind called it "solidly amateur" — which is exactly the level a practice partner needs to be.

Robots as competitors

This is where the headlines come from, and where the numbers changed the fastest. Robot-versus-robot contests like these are often grouped under the name robotic sports.

The half-marathon. Beijing held the first half-marathon for humanoid robots in April 2025. About 20 robots started. Six finished. The winner, Tiangong Ultra, took 2 hours 40 minutes.

One year later, in April 2026, the winning time was 50 minutes 26 seconds — faster than the human world record of roughly 57 minutes. That winner, a robot made by the phone company Honor, ran on its own. A different Honor robot was even faster, but it was being driven by remote control, so it did not count as the winner. Around 60% of the robots in the 2026 race were remote-controlled.

The World Humanoid Robot Games. Also in Beijing. The first edition, in August 2025, had about 500 robots, and the 100-metre winner took 21.5 seconds. The second, in August 2026, had more than 2,000 robots across 51 events, and the 100-metre winner ran it in 9.39 seconds on opening day — under Usain Bolt's 9.58.

Robot soccer. RoboCup has run robot football since 1997. Its long-standing goal is for a team of humanoid robots to beat the human World Cup champions by 2050.

Why these records need an asterisk

A robot beating a human record sounds like a robot being a better athlete. It is closer to a car beating a runner. As one commenter put it about the 2026 race: "my car can outrun a cheetah too."

What is actually impressive is less obvious: staying balanced on a real road for 21 kilometres, getting up after being knocked over, and doing it without a person steering. That is why the rules now separate robots that run on their own from robots that are remote-controlled. A remote-controlled robot is closer to a very expensive drone than to an athlete.

It is also still messy. At the 2025 Games, fully autonomous robots collapsed during football matches and collided in the relay. At the 2026 half-marathon, one robot fell at the start line and another hit a barrier.

Robots as officials — mostly not robots

"Robot umpires" is a great headline and a misleading one.

Major League Baseball's Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) challenge system, used from the 2026 season, is cameras and software. It tracks the pitch and decides whether it crossed the strike zone. Each team can challenge two calls a game. Nothing robotic stands behind home plate.

The same is true for line calls in tennis and offside checks in football. These are AI and computer vision — software that watches — not robotics, which means machines that move in the physical world.

The difference matters if you are writing about it: if nothing physical moves, it is AI in sport, not robotics in sport.

Is robotics a sport?

A separate question hides inside this topic. Student robotics competitions — where teams design, build and drive a robot to score points against other teams — call themselves a sport, and some places agree.

• Belize became the first country to officially recognise robotics as a sport in 2023.
• Some US states let high-school robotics teams earn varsity letters, the same way athletes do.
• The main argument against is physical effort. The argument for points to chess, which the International Olympic Committee already recognises.

So: robotics as a competition is increasingly treated like a sport. That is a different thing from robots playing human sports.

Why sport is a hard test for robots

Sport packs almost everything difficult about robotics into a few seconds:

• Balance on real, uneven ground.
• Speed, reacting in a fraction of a second.
• Prediction, guessing where a ball or an opponent is about to go.
• Teamwork, coordinating with other players.

That is why so many labs use sport as a benchmark. A robot that can play football on grass has solved problems that also matter in a warehouse, a hospital or a home. This is what researchers mean by embodied AI — AI that has to act through a body in the real world, not just answer questions on a screen.

In one line

Robots in sport are already useful as tireless practice partners, improving startlingly fast as competitors, and mostly misnamed as referees. Watch whether they can play on their own — not whether they can beat a stopwatch.

Records in this area are being broken every few months. Figures here were checked in September 2026.

FAQ

How are robots used in sports today?

Three main ways. As training partners that feed balls or take hits so human athletes can practise. As competitors in robot-only events like robot soccer and humanoid races. And, less often than headlines suggest, as officials — most "robot referees" are camera systems, not robots.

Can a robot beat a human athlete?

In narrow tests, yes. In 2026 humanoid robots ran a half-marathon faster than the human world record and sprinted 100 metres faster than Usain Bolt. But a robot winning a race it was built for is closer to a car beating a runner than to a better athlete.

Is robotics a sport?

Robotics competitions, where students design, build and drive robots against other teams, are treated as a sport by some schools and organisers. Belize became the first country to officially recognise robotics as a sport in 2023, and some US states let school teams letter in it. Whether it counts is still argued, mostly over physical effort.

Are robot umpires real robots?

Usually not. Major League Baseball's automated ball-strike system, used from the 2026 season, is cameras and software that call the strike zone. It is nicknamed "robot umpires", but nothing robotic walks onto the field.

What is the hardest sport for a robot?

Team sports on real grass. They need balance, fast reactions, reading opponents and working with teammates, all at once. Robot soccer has been working on this since 1997, and its stated goal — beating the human World Cup champions — is set for 2050.

Will robots replace human athletes?

Unlikely. People watch sport to see what humans can do. Robots are more likely to become training tools and a separate kind of competition, the way motorsport sits next to running rather than replacing it.