Humanoid robots may be about to break the 100-metre sprint record - New Scientist

By Matthew Sparkes

28 April 2026

Last weekend, Sabastian Sawe set a new world record with a sub-2-hour marathon, but he isn’t the only one raising the bar for runners. On 19 April, a robot from Chinese smartphone maker Honor surpassed the human record for the half-marathon. In another event this month, a robot from Unitree came tantalisingly close to the human 100-metre sprint pace. These developments raise two big questions: how much quicker can humanoid robots get, and what’s the point of fast-running robots anyway? Several factors have contributed to the rapid improvement of running robots in recent years, says Petar Kormushev at Imperial College London. There has been a dramatic reduction in the price of components, but also the emergence of higher-quality components such as stronger, more efficient motors that are quicker to react and move. Computer chips have also become faster and less power-hungry, allowing machines to run much more complex control algorithms. Communications between parts can also be faster, and sensors are smaller and more accurate. The inaugural Beijing E-Town Half-Marathon and Humanoid Robot Half-Marathon, where humans and robots competed on the same 21.1-kilometre course, took place in 2025. This month, the second edition saw the number of robotic teams grow nearly fivefold, with more than 100 teams bringing more than 300 humanoid robots to compete. And while the fastest half-marathon time for an autonomous robot in 2025 was 2 hours and 40 minutes, this year that fell dramatically to just over 50 minutes.