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.
Key takeaways
As of early May 2026, 1X’s NEO humanoid robot has entered full‑scale production at its 58,000‑sq‑ft factory in Hayward, California, and the company says the vertically integrated line will enable it to scale to 100,000 units per year by the end of 2027, with pre‑orders already available at about $20,000 each. At the same time, Meta announced the acquisition of the robotics startup Assured Robot Intelligence, bringing its founders Xiaolong Wang and Lerrel Pinto into the firm to accelerate Meta’s humanoid‑AI research and potential consumer‑grade robots. In the industrial arena, Schaeffler and Hexagon Robotics are moving from pilot to deployment, planning to field 1,000 AEON humanoid units across multiple factories beginning in late 2026, while Apptronik has hired former Waymo executive Daniel Chu as chief product officer to steer the commercial launch of its Apollo humanoid platform after securing a $935 million Series A round. A Roland Berger report projects the global humanoid‑robot market could generate $300‑$750 billion in revenue by 2035, and Chinese firm Honor’s running robot is closing in on human sprint speeds, underscoring rapid performance advances across the sector.
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.
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