Totally. In a little while, you might even be able to marry a robot and even raise robot kids.
What a time to be alive indeed!
I highly doubt that that it will happen. But just mocking the celebration of paving a path towards the death of all things that makes being a human worth all the pain..
> the death of all things that makes being a human worth all the pain
I'd say that's the problem. There are people who think humans are uniquely special/purposed, and AI is systematically destroying that notion. They need to wake up, or they may find themselves jumping off a bridge or something.
My contacts at various factories and my own eyes after touring said factories tell me that the assembly lines have been mostly run by programmed (no quotes required, just SPS) robots for the past 50 years or so.
Welcome back to the 1970s I guess?
The ones I see deployed in construction do stuff like drilling holes in hard to reach places, or laying bricks. None of them look like people, though. Much like the typical household dishwasher hasn't been named Alice or Doris for the past 50+ years, but rather Bosch or Samsung and doesn't use actual hands.
But yeah, humanoid robots do look cool and many movies and books told us to be fearful of them.
How many times/long can it do that before being recharged? Can it do other walking and mobility tasks?
The headline by itself doesn't really mean much, anyone can build a purpose-built robot to beat specific human limitations. The question is can it have that kind of performance without completely foregoing most other tasks and abilities.
I agree there, but IMO these are problems that can be fairly easily solved.
My bigger problem is that this is labelled as "humanoid robot". IMO that is more like some machine gadget that looks very remotely like some non-descript model of a humanoid, but not anything at all like a humanoid robot. I am a bit spoiled by Blade Runner here - these robots right now come nowhere close to anything like that right now, even if they run faster than Usain Bolt (but they run differently, so they are cheating; look at the angles, the tiny feet, the cheating in the hip area, the barely existing head - so many things are CHEATING here. I can not call this humanoid robot).
> anyone can build a purpose-built robot to beat specific human limitations
Anyone could build a robot that could run on two legs at that speed for 100m? I think someone would have done it before. Even the other robots in the race were slower.
Why would they when we can already far exceed humans with other methods of locomotion? I don't see high jumping huminoid robots either despite it being even easier to implement.
I'm so tired of my messages taking 2 weeks to deliver! 3000km shouldn't take that long! Personally I'm really looking forward to a world where my message can take maybe even a week to deliver to someone 2000km - 3000km away. What a time to be alive.
It’s the distance rather than the speed that is impressive.
Or, to be more accurate, the distance at that speed.
Because, of course the machine which does not tire and is deliberately designed to be durable and exceed natural human tolerances are better than humans. Cranes can lift far more than the strongest man.
But I understand that historically, bipedal machines have had balancing issues. The number of slight adjustments needed are significant. And doing it while at that speed and also not tumbling over is an achievement.
Why would you call it "humanoid"? Can you qualify this? Because I came to the conclusion that this is NOT a humanoid robot. Having one rectangle and four long spear-like things, does not make something "humanoid". So which criteria do you use?
I think of "humanoid" as a machine capable of operating in the same complex physical environment as humans do. For instance, it is generally more comfortable for a healthy adult human to use a steep staircase than a steep ramp. So a "humanoid" robot would be capable of using the same staircase instead of requiring a ramp to be purpose-built just for it.
I don't see the difference. Is a humanoid robot not a machine? What surprises is that it took so long to achieve this. It took Honda 20 years to get to ASIMO in 2000. I'm not surprised by the fact that 26(!) years later, a humanoid robot finally exceeds human capabilities in basic tasks like running.
Such robot would easily smash the current marathon record as well and the only thing I'd be impressed by, would be the battery capacity tbh.
If you were ever trapped on the top floor of a burning building, should we just send a car up there?
Nobody is surprised by advancement like this, but there is still a lot of engineering that went into it, not talking about how it’s now almost consumer grade tech that you can buy.
> If you were ever trapped on the top floor of a burning building, should we just send a car up there?
Riddle me this then: what role does a robot that has been built to run real fast play in that scenario?
Sure, a good deal of engineering went into this, but the hard part - solving bipedal locomotion - had been done long before that. Apart from showing off it's not really advancing the field and so there's not too much left to be impressed by (honestly, the battery and actuator efficiency that allowed the thing to do a half marathon was MUCH more impressive, at least to me). It seems to me to be more analogous to car tuning.
> A machine is stronger and faster than a human? Shocking. Next we'll learn that cranes can lift heavy loads faster than a human with ropes and pullys.
It’s funny how absurdly dismissive and condescending tech people can be about difficult problems in other people’s fields that they know absolutely nothing about. Numerous developers, informed by maybe a YouTube video, Reddit thread, or equally misguided explainer post on another developer’s blog, have tried to ‘correct’ me about topics in a field in which I hold a degree and have plenty of professional experience. Other tech people might be impressed because they have matching blind spots in their mental models of the world, but people who actually understand, rather than baselessly assuming they understand, see someone being smug about their own ignorance.
> It’s funny how absurdly dismissive and condescending tech people can be about difficult problems in other people’s fields that they know absolutely nothing about
"Machines can do stuff humans cannot do" isn't exactly groundbreaking in 2026.
The only interesting part of this story is that this particular machine form factor looks pretty much like a human
It's still not exactly shocking news that it can outrun a human. Of course it can. We're well past John Henry vs the Machine at this point in history
> The only interesting part of this story is that this particular machine form factor looks pretty much like a human
That's the whole goddamn point of this. Fast stable autonomous bipedal locomotion was out of reach of human technology for decades. Since this year it isn't. This was impossible year ago, despite all of the achievements of humanity, cumulative, till the year 2025, included. Now it isn't.
Its a nice demo of advances, but its not hugely significant in the way some comments here make it out to be. We have had machines faster than humans for a long time. We have had animals faster than humans for longer than there have been humans.
> We have had machines faster than humans for a long time
Yes it is true that we have had machines on rubber wheels that can move very fast on open roadways. But these new machines are also capable of walking up and down stairs, navigating obstacles, using doorways, and generally operating in the same complex spaces that humans do.
You won't be outperformed in humanity. And that's precisely the point. People will start rejecting AI and robots en masse, because they'll get disgusted by it, the same way you are disgusted when eating a "powder shake" kind of meal compared to a whole, earthy, flavorful, home-made meal
Workers hated the factories of the Industrial Revolution but the masses also wanted those sweet sweet high quality textiles that were tighter knit and lasted longer than anything handspun. The same will happen for AI.
Also, further counterpoint, if we reject industrial produced food, who spent $139 billion at McDonald’s in 2025?
If people were rejecting them en masse now we might have a chance to reverse this
As it stands I am not hopeful. I believe the frog will be well and truly boiled long before we reach the rejection en masse stage and it will be too late to change course
BTW I consumed Soylent regularly for several years while living in the US and was never "disgusted" by it. Would love to get my hands on some now as it's been so long. You should watch your arguments.
Nah. What's often overlooked when seeing these (mostly) propaganda events is the fact that the actual autonomy of these machines is still lacking.
We've had purpose-built machines that outperform every human at specific tasks for over a century now. Just because a subset that's popular these days (the "humanoid" and dog-like variants) invoke some psychological and cultural (we've been primed by media for over 150 years at this point) fears, doesn't make them more capable than they seem.
Sure, the thing can run real fast, but looking at it, that's pretty much all it actually can do. In contrast to a boring old industrial robot, though, being able to win a half-marathon or a 100m dash against any hypothetical human isn't all that useful, no?
Given its form factor there is already a ton of active research into developments that would be just about plug and play. Hands with coordination for example.
Of course it's still lacking. In contrast, how long does it take for a human to go from birth to being able to break any world records? How many years of dedication just to hone themself for that particular thing? And is a human breaking a record any more "useful" than a machine breaking it?
I'm ready since I was born. I'm including the times when people were better than machines at anything into Middle Ages. I hope I'll live long enough so I can see civilization finally exit them.
Well - in a way this is nice, just for documented record, even though a bit useless too.
However had, I watched it, and I have some problems here.
First: these robots have barely any head. I think for a humanoid robot, you need
to have a proper head with some weight in relation to the rest, otherwise it is
just SIMULATING being humanoid. Then the feet; this is also a problem. Specifically
the feet are not like human feet at all, they are more like stubs or elongated stubs with push-back being made-super easy. Usain Bolt does not have such short jokes of feet, so this comparison is unfair. Same with the hip area - I am sorry, but the hip structure of these robots is ABSOLUTELY not at all like a human. I am not even calling these humanoids.
Don't get me wrong, it is good that science and technology progresses and such robots may do things that robots solely with a wheel alone, may be unable to do, such as running, climbing, you name it. But I simply can not call them "humanoid". They are, IMO, simply not humanoid and not even humanoid-like.
For "proper" science fiction, have a look at the first Blade Runner movie, but also the first terminator. Initially Cameron thought Arnold was unfit because he was massive and the infiltrating cyborg should melt into the environment easily (which was better in Terminator 2, T1000 was kind of more "logical", but I hated the background storyline in Terminator 2, it made no sense to me, no clue why people preferred that over the original terminator movie). I am aware that these running robots don't aim to be a look-alike replacement, but they simply also should not be called humanoid robots right now. They simply are not humanoid. Thus one should not call them that way.
All the snarky comments about cars or other vehicles doing it faster seem to miss the point that none of these attempt to mimic/improve on the running movements of humans... but I guess you do you, this is an impressive robotics feat in my oponion.
It would've been impressive 15 years ago. People seem to forget that first humanoid robot capable of competently walking was showcased by Honda 26 years ago.
over 20 years ago, the updated version was capable of running and climbing stairs.
So a purpose-built (look at the thing - running is all it can actually do) two legged fast running robot doesn't seem all that impressive today. Cool? Sure! Useful? Not so much. Impressive? Whatever... it's just showing off at this point, much like Boston Dynamic's Atlas series that went nowhere (in contrast to this machine: this one did half marathon distance:)
If this Silicon Valley forum is full of people denying the achievement, and the US goverment is banning the technology and competition, I expect the engineers and scientists in China will pull much further ahead.
The US is behaving like an industry incumbent, like Blackberry when the iPhone came out. That the US could fall behind on technology seems to have not crossed many minds. It will be very hard to overcome that first mover advantage.
I keep reading about these things in the news, and they are nice marketing stance. But I still wonder how far we are away from humanoid robots being commonplace in every day life. I don't share the fear some seem to have towards robots, just because a world filled with robots was something I dreamed of as kid. But I still wonder about the cost and feasibility of robot police officers, or cashiers etc.
I’m much more interested in seeing a robot with excellent fine motor control. A robot folding a piece of tissue paper without ripping it would be more impressive to me than this robot or the backflip robot.
Did this thing travel thru a time portal and ask for a boots, clothes sunglasses and motorcycle too? this stuff seems to be evolving very quickly now. wasnt that long ago these things were legs only with cables and bunch of humans holding it.
unprovable | 8 hours ago
treetalker | 5 hours ago
mbeavitt | 8 hours ago
qsera | 6 hours ago
Totally. In a little while, you might even be able to marry a robot and even raise robot kids.
What a time to be alive indeed!
I highly doubt that that it will happen. But just mocking the celebration of paving a path towards the death of all things that makes being a human worth all the pain..
blaufuchs | 3 hours ago
p_j_w | 3 hours ago
Retric | 3 hours ago
People can like GPS while disliking nuclear weapons without any contradiction.
I dislike the vast waste of resources happening during the current AI bubble, and don’t really care about generative AI.
skeledrew | 3 hours ago
I'd say that's the problem. There are people who think humans are uniquely special/purposed, and AI is systematically destroying that notion. They need to wake up, or they may find themselves jumping off a bridge or something.
grim_io | 3 hours ago
hobofan | 2 hours ago
qayxc | 2 hours ago
The ones I see deployed in construction do stuff like drilling holes in hard to reach places, or laying bricks. None of them look like people, though. Much like the typical household dishwasher hasn't been named Alice or Doris for the past 50+ years, but rather Bosch or Samsung and doesn't use actual hands.
But yeah, humanoid robots do look cool and many movies and books told us to be fearful of them.
gruturo | 2 hours ago
Killer robots which can't be outrun and which can give chase through urban landscapes
> What a time to be alive
Indeed.
zeristor | 8 hours ago
Humans on enhancements vs robots?
feverzsj | 8 hours ago
EA-3167 | 3 hours ago
AngryData | 3 hours ago
The headline by itself doesn't really mean much, anyone can build a purpose-built robot to beat specific human limitations. The question is can it have that kind of performance without completely foregoing most other tasks and abilities.
shevy-java | 3 hours ago
My bigger problem is that this is labelled as "humanoid robot". IMO that is more like some machine gadget that looks very remotely like some non-descript model of a humanoid, but not anything at all like a humanoid robot. I am a bit spoiled by Blade Runner here - these robots right now come nowhere close to anything like that right now, even if they run faster than Usain Bolt (but they run differently, so they are cheating; look at the angles, the tiny feet, the cheating in the hip area, the barely existing head - so many things are CHEATING here. I can not call this humanoid robot).
skeledrew | 3 hours ago
You should ask those questions in the same spirit re a 1 vs a 5 vs a 20 year old. May lead to some insight on development-level-based capability.
mmooss | 3 hours ago
Anyone could build a robot that could run on two legs at that speed for 100m? I think someone would have done it before. Even the other robots in the race were slower.
AngryData | 56 minutes ago
joduplessis | 3 hours ago
I'm so tired of my messages taking 2 weeks to deliver! 3000km shouldn't take that long! Personally I'm really looking forward to a world where my message can take maybe even a week to deliver to someone 2000km - 3000km away. What a time to be alive.
thangalin | 3 hours ago
joduplessis | 3 hours ago
bena | 3 hours ago
Or, to be more accurate, the distance at that speed.
Because, of course the machine which does not tire and is deliberately designed to be durable and exceed natural human tolerances are better than humans. Cranes can lift far more than the strongest man.
But I understand that historically, bipedal machines have had balancing issues. The number of slight adjustments needed are significant. And doing it while at that speed and also not tumbling over is an achievement.
SoftTalker | 3 hours ago
paulpauper | 3 hours ago
shevy-java | 3 hours ago
nom | 3 hours ago
phoghed | 3 hours ago
> Lightning the humanoid robot clocks 9.32sec in Beijing
Bipedal, hips, knees, feet. Looks humanoid to me.
If cloudflare puts this in a grid of images and asks me to pick the humanoids, I’m clicking it
paulpauper | 3 hours ago
petcat | 3 hours ago
qayxc | 3 hours ago
Such robot would easily smash the current marathon record as well and the only thing I'd be impressed by, would be the battery capacity tbh.
paulpauper | 3 hours ago
qayxc | 2 hours ago
Cookingboy | 3 hours ago
If you were ever trapped on the top floor of a burning building, should we just send a car up there?
Nobody is surprised by advancement like this, but there is still a lot of engineering that went into it, not talking about how it’s now almost consumer grade tech that you can buy.
qayxc | 2 hours ago
Riddle me this then: what role does a robot that has been built to run real fast play in that scenario?
Sure, a good deal of engineering went into this, but the hard part - solving bipedal locomotion - had been done long before that. Apart from showing off it's not really advancing the field and so there's not too much left to be impressed by (honestly, the battery and actuator efficiency that allowed the thing to do a half marathon was MUCH more impressive, at least to me). It seems to me to be more analogous to car tuning.
throw1234567891 | 18 minutes ago
It will run real fast up the stairs, I guess? Is it a good enough riddle?
throw1234567891 | 15 minutes ago
DrewADesign | 2 hours ago
> A machine is stronger and faster than a human? Shocking. Next we'll learn that cranes can lift heavy loads faster than a human with ropes and pullys.
It’s funny how absurdly dismissive and condescending tech people can be about difficult problems in other people’s fields that they know absolutely nothing about. Numerous developers, informed by maybe a YouTube video, Reddit thread, or equally misguided explainer post on another developer’s blog, have tried to ‘correct’ me about topics in a field in which I hold a degree and have plenty of professional experience. Other tech people might be impressed because they have matching blind spots in their mental models of the world, but people who actually understand, rather than baselessly assuming they understand, see someone being smug about their own ignorance.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/engineer%27s_disease
bluefirebrand | 2 hours ago
"Machines can do stuff humans cannot do" isn't exactly groundbreaking in 2026.
The only interesting part of this story is that this particular machine form factor looks pretty much like a human
It's still not exactly shocking news that it can outrun a human. Of course it can. We're well past John Henry vs the Machine at this point in history
scotty79 | an hour ago
That's the whole goddamn point of this. Fast stable autonomous bipedal locomotion was out of reach of human technology for decades. Since this year it isn't. This was impossible year ago, despite all of the achievements of humanity, cumulative, till the year 2025, included. Now it isn't.
bluefirebrand | 46 minutes ago
"That's the whole point" that we don't need humans anymore?
Great. I'm a human. You want me to celebrate? No thanks
m3kw9 | 3 hours ago
graemep | 3 hours ago
petcat | 3 hours ago
Yes it is true that we have had machines on rubber wheels that can move very fast on open roadways. But these new machines are also capable of walking up and down stairs, navigating obstacles, using doorways, and generally operating in the same complex spaces that humans do.
Now apparently they can run really fast too.
prmph | 3 hours ago
seydor | 3 hours ago
skeledrew | 3 hours ago
oulipo | 3 hours ago
wincy | 3 hours ago
Also, further counterpoint, if we reject industrial produced food, who spent $139 billion at McDonald’s in 2025?
bluefirebrand | 2 hours ago
As it stands I am not hopeful. I believe the frog will be well and truly boiled long before we reach the rejection en masse stage and it will be too late to change course
skeledrew | 2 hours ago
What does that even mean?
BTW I consumed Soylent regularly for several years while living in the US and was never "disgusted" by it. Would love to get my hands on some now as it's been so long. You should watch your arguments.
qayxc | 3 hours ago
We've had purpose-built machines that outperform every human at specific tasks for over a century now. Just because a subset that's popular these days (the "humanoid" and dog-like variants) invoke some psychological and cultural (we've been primed by media for over 150 years at this point) fears, doesn't make them more capable than they seem.
Sure, the thing can run real fast, but looking at it, that's pretty much all it actually can do. In contrast to a boring old industrial robot, though, being able to win a half-marathon or a 100m dash against any hypothetical human isn't all that useful, no?
interstice | 2 hours ago
skeledrew | 2 hours ago
tomcam | 2 hours ago
almost_usual | 2 hours ago
Until then human is the best at navigating and moving across various terrain.
scotty79 | an hour ago
utopcell | 3 hours ago
shevy-java | 3 hours ago
However had, I watched it, and I have some problems here.
First: these robots have barely any head. I think for a humanoid robot, you need to have a proper head with some weight in relation to the rest, otherwise it is just SIMULATING being humanoid. Then the feet; this is also a problem. Specifically the feet are not like human feet at all, they are more like stubs or elongated stubs with push-back being made-super easy. Usain Bolt does not have such short jokes of feet, so this comparison is unfair. Same with the hip area - I am sorry, but the hip structure of these robots is ABSOLUTELY not at all like a human. I am not even calling these humanoids.
Don't get me wrong, it is good that science and technology progresses and such robots may do things that robots solely with a wheel alone, may be unable to do, such as running, climbing, you name it. But I simply can not call them "humanoid". They are, IMO, simply not humanoid and not even humanoid-like.
For "proper" science fiction, have a look at the first Blade Runner movie, but also the first terminator. Initially Cameron thought Arnold was unfit because he was massive and the infiltrating cyborg should melt into the environment easily (which was better in Terminator 2, T1000 was kind of more "logical", but I hated the background storyline in Terminator 2, it made no sense to me, no clue why people preferred that over the original terminator movie). I am aware that these running robots don't aim to be a look-alike replacement, but they simply also should not be called humanoid robots right now. They simply are not humanoid. Thus one should not call them that way.
timedude | 3 hours ago
bethekidyouwant | 3 hours ago
drnick1 | 3 hours ago
throw101010 | 3 hours ago
qayxc | 2 hours ago
So a purpose-built (look at the thing - running is all it can actually do) two legged fast running robot doesn't seem all that impressive today. Cool? Sure! Useful? Not so much. Impressive? Whatever... it's just showing off at this point, much like Boston Dynamic's Atlas series that went nowhere (in contrast to this machine: this one did half marathon distance:)
throw1234567891 | 23 minutes ago
mmooss | 2 hours ago
The US is behaving like an industry incumbent, like Blackberry when the iPhone came out. That the US could fall behind on technology seems to have not crossed many minds. It will be very hard to overcome that first mover advantage.
throw1234567891 | 21 minutes ago
More like "If this forum created by a guy from Silicon Valley..."
mmooss | 14 minutes ago
vivekd | 2 hours ago
conartist6 | 2 hours ago
andai | an hour ago
kasperni | an hour ago
Watching robot after robot being taken away on a stretcher was pretty funny.
quickthrowman | 40 minutes ago
t_mehmet | 36 minutes ago
throw1234567891 | 29 minutes ago