Chinese humanoid robot sets speed record thanks to high-quality sneakers

The Chinese company Robot Era presented its new humanoid robot STAR1, which, when jogging, reaches a speed of 12.87 km/h, which is a new record for bipedal robots. The developers equipped their robot with a pair of high-quality sneakers, which, in their opinion, gave it an advantage over its brother, who did not get shoes.

Image source: Robot Era

STAR1 weighs 65 kg and is 171 cm tall. The robot is controlled by an AI accelerator with a performance of 275 trillion operations per second (TOPS), which is significantly higher than the typical AI processing power in the best modern laptops, which ranges from 45 to 55 TOPS. The robot also has 12 degrees of freedom, which provides it with the widest range of motion.

The STAR1 navigated a variety of terrain types, including grass, gravel, paved and dirt roads. Under AI control, the robot managed to maintain maximum speed for 34 minutes.

With a top speed of 12.87 km/h, STAR1 surpassed Unitree’s H1 robot record of 11.9 km/h, set in March 2024. It should be noted that, unlike STAR1, H1 did not jog, but moved using the race walking method, since his legs were not off the ground at the same time.

In the promotional video, the development team staged a running competition between two identical STAR1s in the Gobi Desert. According to them, the robot, wearing sneakers, turned out to be the winner of this race.

It seems that the creators themselves had a hard time catching up with their robot.

Robot Era was founded by people from Tsinghua University in August 2023. Previously, the company has already presented several humanoid robots, as well as a robotic manipulator arm.