Unitree Robot Overtakes Usain Bolt, and It's About to Get Even Faster

   The Chinese company Unitree Robotics unveiled a new humanoid robot, Superman, capable of reaching speeds of up to 12.66 meters per second. This exceeds the top speed recorded by Usain Bolt during his world-record 100-meter dash in 2009, when he ran at 12.4 meters per second.

   During testing, the robot also performed a 2-meter standing jump.

   According to Unitree, a speed of 12.66 meters per second makes Superman the company's fastest humanoid robot. By comparison, the previous H1 model reached speeds of up to 10 meters per second.

   In 2025, China held its first marathon in which robots were allowed to participate alongside humans. Back then, it was a pitiful sight: most of the robots were controlled by humans, each with a support team of a dozen people, but still, far from all of them made it to the finish line.

   Only a year passed. In the spring of 2026, robots took part in the marathon again. Over the course of a year, Chinese companies developed numerous new models—not for commercial sale, but to perfect the technology.

   A truly qualitative leap occurred. If in 2025, a robot's best result was worse than a human's worst, then by 2026, a robot's best result was an absolute world record. The number of robots that ran completely autonomously and managed to finish also increased by orders of magnitude.