Watch | A Humanoid Robot and its 8-mph Sneakers

Meet STAR1, a bipedal robot from Robot Era in China. The robot measures 5 feet 7 inches and weighs in at 143 lbs. Oh, and it can run over 8 mph, so it’s the fastest in its class to date. It’s secret? A pair of sneakers and a little bit of AI power.

According to the company’s website, STAR1’s AI hardware features a processing power of 275 trillion operations per second (TOPS). The robot has 12 degrees of freedom,  referring to its number of joints and range of movements.

In what could be a first, the research team recently pitted two STAR1 robots against each other in the Gobi Desert. One wore sneakers to see if they would impact the robot’s speed, while the other ran “barefoot.” The rest is history.

Combining high-torque motors and AI algorithms, the sneakered STAR1 navigated different types of terrain, from grassland to gravel, jogging on paved roads and bare ground, sustaining its top speed for 34 minutes.

At 8 mph, it beat previous record holder Unitree’s H1 robot and its record of 7.4 mph in March 2024. Although STAR1 had the help of footwear, H1 was not technically jogging or running as its feet did not both leave the ground at once during its speed test.

The STAR1 is just one of many humanoid robots that companies worldwide have showcased in recent months. These include Tesla’s Optimus Gen-2 robot, the AI-powered Figure 01 robot, and Boston Dynamics’ new Atlas.