Humanoid

Two new videos from Chinese companies make it clear: it'll soon be no use trying to run from robots. Rapid upgrades in speed and agility mean robot dogs can now sprint at near-Olympic pace, and humanoids are running smoothly over tough terrain.

The AI behavior models controlling how robots interact with the physical world haven't been advancing at the crazy pace that GPT-style language models have – but new multiverse 'world simulators' from Nvidia and Google could change that rapidly.

Chinese startup Pudu Robotics wants you to put its latest robot to work. The company's new humanoid D9 can walk upright, carry loads up to 44 lb, stock grocery store shelves – and maybe even sell you your next car.

In the long list of tasks we'd like humanoid robots to perform for us, shooting hoops is probably close to the bottom. But the CUE6 bot from Toyota recently set its second Guinness World Record, for the farthest basketball shot by a humanoid robot.

In its latest video, Boston Dynamics' Atlas robot performs mundane tasks entirely autonomously using a machine learning vision model, but with a twist. And we do mean "twist."

Brand new videos on the Tesla and Unitree humanoids perfectly illustrate the different approaches behind these two cutting-edge robots. Optimus is clearly focused on useful work, ASAP – while the Unitree G1 is becoming surprisingly agile and athletic.

A few months back, China's Robot Era demonstrated the strolling capabilities of its XBot-L humanoid by setting it loose on the Great Wall of China. Now the company has released video footage of two flagship Star1 models racing through the Gobi Desert.

One of the more interesting and unique robots in the emerging humanoid space has received an unexpected upgrade. Shanghai's Fourier Intelligence has just launched the GR-2 – taller, heavier, smarter, more dextrous and much stronger than the GR-1.

The fastest any human has ever run on record was Usain Bolt. He was clocked at a ridiculously quick 27.79 mph (44.72 km/h) when he ran a 9.58-second 100-meter dash. Two-legged robots can run even faster, and it looks really weird.

Back in February, Norway's 1X showed off the progress it had made with its pick-and-place workplace humanoid, Eve. Now the OpenAI-backed company has released video footage of its latest prototype, a bipedal butlerbot named Neo Beta.

Imagine that you're injured on a remote mountain path but have managed to contact emergency rescue. The first to arrive on the scene could be a small humanoid robot wearing a jetpack if Italian research bears fruit.

A few short months after Chinese startup Astribot released jaw-dropping video footage of its humanoid helper, the company has now unveiled a launch video for the S1 – which shows the bot making waffles, feeding the cat, serving tea and shooting hoops.