# A short history of the humanoid, from Elektro to the order button > Our record holds 111 dated milestones since 1939. Sixty-eight of them are from this decade, and what changed was not the walking. It was the price tag. Published: 2026-09-05 Section: History Author: Geert Jan van Vlastuin, Editor, humanoid.observer Canonical: https://humanoid.observer/blog/a-short-history-of-humanoids-1939-to-2026/ Licence: editorial text all rights reserved. The underlying data is CC BY 4.0 at https://humanoid.observer/data/. Cite as: humanoid.observer, https://humanoid.observer/blog/a-short-history-of-humanoids-1939-to-2026/, accessed . --- Our record holds 111 dated milestones in humanoid robotics. The first is 30 April 1939. Sixty-eight of them, 61 percent, fall after 1 January 2020, and 47 fall in the 32 months since January 2024. The curve suggests the machines suddenly got good. The entries say otherwise. Walking was solved decades ago. What arrived in the 2020s was a price, a store page and a Chinese production line. ## Six eras, one table | Era | Years | Defining machine | What it proved | |---|---|---|---| | The stage machine | 1939 | [Elektro](/robots/elektro/) | A humanoid draws a crowd. An operator did the rest. | | The university biped | 1973 to 1995 | [WABOT-1](/robots/wabot-1/) | Walking, grasping, vision and speech in one body. | | Walking solved | 1996 to 2011 | [Honda P2](/robots/honda-p2/), then [ASIMO](/robots/asimo/) | A biped carries its own power and computer, then runs at 9 km/h. | | The video decade | 2012 to 2019 | [Atlas (hydraulic)](/robots/boston-dynamics-atlas-hydraulic/) | Backflips and parkour. Seven copies, none sold. | | The pivot to product | 2020 to 2023 | [Unitree H1](/robots/unitree-h1/) | A full-size electric humanoid with a list price, from China. | | The order button | 2024 to 2026 | [Unitree G1](/robots/unitree-g1/) | $16,000 on a store page, then $5,900, then a $20,000 home robot on preorder. | ## 1939 to 1995: a showman and a university [Westinghouse](/companies/westinghouse/) showed Elektro at the New York World's Fair on 30 April 1939: 2.1 metres, 120 kg, about 700 words from 78 rpm records. Its record marks teleoperation as yes; every action was an operator's spoken words counted as relay pulses. The next milestone is 34 years later. [Waseda University](/companies/waseda/) completed [WABOT-1](/robots/wabot-1/) in 1973, counted as the first full-scale humanoid. It walked at about 45 seconds a step, grasped objects and conversed in Japanese. [WABOT-2](/robots/wabot-2/) played an organ in 1984. [Honda](/companies/honda/) built [E0](/robots/honda-e-series/) in 1986, the start of a program it kept secret for ten years. Four milestones in 22 years, all research. ## 1996 to 2019: walking is solved, then filmed On 20 December 1996 Honda unveiled [P2](/robots/honda-p2/), the first biped to carry its own batteries and computers while it walked, climbed stairs and pushed a cart. Its record notes wireless remote control. [ASIMO](/robots/asimo/) followed on 31 October 2000, ran at 6 km/h by 13 December 2005 and at 9 km/h in its 2011 version. Its shows were largely pre-programmed, with some autonomous navigation. Japan's [HRP-2](/robots/hrp-2/) (2003) went to about 16 labs at several hundred thousand dollars each. Twenty milestones in sixteen years, and not one order form. ASIMO was never sold; rentals were reported at about $150,000 a year. The DARPA Robotics Challenge, announced 10 April 2012, made the field a spectator sport. [Boston Dynamics](/companies/boston-dynamics/) unveiled the hydraulic [Atlas](/robots/boston-dynamics-atlas-hydraulic/) on 11 July 2013; seven copies went to DARPA teams. [KAIST](/companies/kaist/)'s [DRC-HUBO+](/robots/drc-hubo/) won the Finals on 6 June 2015, finishing all eight tasks in 44 minutes 28 seconds under supervised teleoperation. Then the backflip on 16 November 2017, parkour in 2018, gymnastics in 2019. Atlas appears in 14 of the 111 milestones, six of them demos. Never for sale; retired 16 April 2024. The era's one priced machine was [Pepper](/robots/softbank-pepper/), on sale in Japan from 20 June 2015, sold out in a minute, about 27,000 built before production paused in 2020. Pepper has wheels. Honda stopped ASIMO development on 28 June 2018. At the end of 2019 the record holds 43 milestones, and not one is tied to a Chinese maker. ## 2020 to 2026: the order button [Tesla](/companies/tesla/) announced Optimus on 19 August 2021. [Optimus Gen 2](/robots/tesla-optimus-gen-2/) still has no price, and the units serving drinks at the We, Robot event on 10 October 2024 were confirmed as remotely assisted; its record marks teleoperation as yes. The price came from elsewhere. [Unitree](/companies/unitree/) showed [H1](/robots/unitree-h1/) in August 2023 at about $90,000, then [G1](/robots/unitree-g1/) on 13 May 2024 at $16,000, now listed at $13,500. Both records mark teleoperation as partial: locomotion is learned, manipulation demos are mostly scripted or remote. [AgiBot](/companies/agibot/) announced mass production in August 2024 and reported its 1,000th [A2](/robots/agibot-yuanzheng-a2/) in January 2025. Unitree's [R1](/robots/unitree-r1/) arrived on 25 July 2025 at $5,900. [1X](/companies/1x/) opened preorders for [NEO](/robots/1x-neo/) on 28 October 2025 at $20,000 or $499 a month, with an Expert Mode in which staff teleoperate the robot; its record marks teleoperation as yes. The counts agree. Of the 68 milestones since 2020, 21 involve a Chinese maker, against zero before. Six of seven deployment milestones and all three regulation milestones are from this decade. Of the 44 machines you can order today, 35 were first revealed in the 2020s and 31 come from China. The four older ones are two 40 cm hobby kits, a 51 cm research platform and an upper body on a stand. No full-size legged humanoid revealed before 2020 can be ordered. ## What 87 years say about believing a demo Every era had a convincing demonstration. Elektro's was a voice. P2's was a staircase. Atlas's was a backflip that 14 milestones and eleven years never turned into a product. The demonstrations were real, and none of them told you whether you could get one, what it cost, or who was holding the controller. If you are deciding whether a humanoid is ready for your floor or home, skip the video and ask three questions: is there a price on the maker's own page, is there a date a unit ships, and what does the teleoperation field say. The first milestone in 87 years to carry a price in its own title is dated 13 May 2024. Treat anything that cannot answer all three as 1939 with better actuators. ## Sources - [Elektro](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elektro), Wikipedia - [WABOT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WABOT), Wikipedia - [Robot Development History](https://global.honda/innovation/robotics/robot-development-history.html), Honda - [ASIMO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASIMO), Wikipedia - [HRP-2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HRP-2), Wikipedia - [DARPA Robotics Challenge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Robotics_Challenge), Wikipedia - [Atlas](https://bostondynamics.com/atlas/), Boston Dynamics - [Pepper (robot)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper_(robot)), Wikipedia - [Optimus (robot)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimus_(robot)), Wikipedia - [Unitree G1](https://www.unitree.com/g1), Unitree - [Unitree R1](https://www.unitree.com/R1), Unitree - [AgiBot](https://www.agibot.com/), AgiBot - [1X NEO](https://www.1x.tech/neo), 1X Technologies