NIST proposes a baseline performance benchmark for humanoid robots

• The most recent developments show a rapid expansion of commercial and research‑focused humanoid robots.
• In late May, NVIDIA unveiled the Isaac GR00T reference humanoid, built on a Unitree H2 Plus body, equipped with Sharpa five‑fingered hands and the new Jetson Thor compute module, and made available through an open software stack for academic labs such as Stanford, ETH Zurich and UC San Diego.
• A day later, NVIDIA announced that it will also partner with U.S., European and South Korean makers to broaden the platform, while confirming that the Unitree‑based system will begin sales to researchers later this year.
• Parallel to these research advances, production is scaling: 1X Technologies started full‑scale manufacturing of its NEO humanoid in Hayward, California, and has secured 10,000 pre‑orders with the first shipments expected before year‑end.
• Meanwhile, Tesla’s Optimus line has been shifted to the Fremont factory, with plans to reach a capacity of one million units annually, and Figure AI demonstrated three of its humanoids running continuously for over 24 hours in a package‑sorting test, underscoring growing reliability in logistics settings.

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