A Chinese Company Says Its Robot Runs Faster Than Usain Bolt

Unitree's new humanoid, developed in three months, hit 12.66 meters per second — above Bolt's fastest recorded speed. The figure is a peak over a short stretch, not a race, and nobody outside the company has verified it.

Unitree, the Chinese robotics manufacturer, released video of a new humanoid robot it says reached 12.66 meters per second — roughly 28 miles per hour. Usain Bolt's peak during his 100-meter world record in 2009 was about 12.4 meters per second. The company says the machine was developed in three months, and released the claim as it prepares to sell shares to the public.

The caveats matter and are not hidden. The robot's figure is a peak reading over a short stretch, not an average across 100 meters from a standing start, which is what Bolt's record measures. No independent party has verified it. And the comparison flatters the machine in a deeper way: Bolt accelerated from stillness on a track, in a race, under rules. A robot sprinting in a controlled setting for a promotional video is doing something related but not the same.

The video is also, by wide agreement, unsettling to watch. The gait is not human — the knees bend the wrong way, the movement has the quality of something animated rather than alive — and a fair number of the reactions online have been variations on the word "nightmare."

What is genuinely notable is the pace of improvement rather than the number. Robots that could barely stay upright while walking are now sprinting, and the interval between those two facts is a few years, not a few decades. Sixteen months ago, humanoid robots at a Beijing half-marathon were falling over at the starting line.

Speed on its own is not useful — nobody needs a robot to run — but the underlying control problem is the same one that governs carrying, climbing stairs, and catching itself when it stumbles. A machine that can run can usually do the quieter things too.