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.
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 | A humanoid draws a crowd. An operator did the rest. |
| The university biped | 1973 to 1995 | WABOT-1 | Walking, grasping, vision and speech in one body. |
| Walking solved | 1996 to 2011 | Honda P2, then ASIMO | A biped carries its own power and computer, then runs at 9 km/h. |
| The video decade | 2012 to 2019 | Atlas (hydraulic) | Backflips and parkour. Seven copies, none sold. |
| The pivot to product | 2020 to 2023 | Unitree H1 | A full-size electric humanoid with a list price, from China. |
| The order button | 2024 to 2026 | 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 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 completed 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 played an organ in 1984. Honda built E0 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, 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 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 (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 unveiled the hydraulic Atlas on 11 July 2013; seven copies went to DARPA teams. KAIST’s 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, 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 announced Optimus on 19 August 2021. 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 showed H1 in August 2023 at about $90,000, then 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 announced mass production in August 2024 and reported its 1,000th A2 in January 2025. Unitree’s R1 arrived on 25 July 2025 at $5,900. 1X opened preorders for 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.
Elektro
Elektro was a 2.1 meter aluminium humanoid built by Westinghouse for the 1939 New York World's Fair. It walked on rollers, spoke about 700 words played from records, blew up balloons and smoked cigarettes. It is the best known pre computer humanoid and shaped the popular image of the robot.
WABOT-1
WABOT-1, built by Ichiro Kato's group at Waseda University between 1970 and 1973, is generally considered the world's first full-scale humanoid robot, combining walking, manipulation, vision and speech.
WABOT-2
WABOT-2 was Waseda's specialist musician robot, able to read a score and play a keyboard, presented at the 1985 Tsukuba science expo.
Honda E series (E0 to E6)
Honda's E series were seven legged research machines developed in secret between 1986 and 1993, progressing from static to dynamic walking and stair climbing. They were revealed publicly only when P2 was announced in 1996.
Honda P2
P2 was the first humanoid to carry its own power and computing while walking, an achievement that surprised the robotics community when Honda revealed it in December 1996.
ASIMO
ASIMO, unveiled by Honda on 31 October 2000, was the best known humanoid of its era, evolving through several versions until the 2011 model that ran at 9 km/h. Honda ended development in 2018 and retired the robot from public shows in 2022.
HRP-2 Promet
HRP-2, designed with Kawada Industries and styled by anime designer Yutaka Izubuchi, was the workhorse humanoid of the Japanese Humanoid Robotics Project and of labs such as LAAS-CNRS.
Atlas (hydraulic)
The hydraulic Atlas was unveiled in July 2013 for the DARPA Robotics Challenge and became the best-known research humanoid of the 2010s through its parkour and backflip videos. Later versions were 150 cm tall, 89 kg and had 28 hydraulic joints. Boston Dynamics retired it in April 2024.
DRC-HUBO+
DRC-HUBO+ from Team KAIST won the 2015 DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals and the USD 2 million prize, using a transformable design that kneels onto wheels for stable driving.
Pepper
Pepper is a 120 cm wheeled humanoid designed by Aldebaran for SoftBank and launched in June 2014 as a social robot for shops, banks and homes. About 27,000 were built before production paused in 2020. It is the most widely deployed social humanoid to date.
Optimus Gen 2
Optimus Gen 2, revealed on 12 December 2023, is about 10 kg lighter than Gen 1, walks 30 percent faster and has Tesla-designed actuators, an actuated neck and tactile fingers. It has been used for internal factory trials and at Tesla marketing events, where it was partly teleoperated. It is the version the public has seen most.
Unitree H1
H1 is Unitree's first full-size humanoid, revealed in August 2023. It set a walking speed of 3.3 m/s and performed the first standing backflip by a full-size electric humanoid in March 2024. Sixteen H1 units danced on the CCTV Spring Festival Gala in January 2025.
Unitree G1
G1 is Unitree's compact humanoid, announced in May 2024 at USD 16,000 and now listed at USD 13,500. Its low price and open SDK made it the default research and education humanoid worldwide. Read the configuration carefully: the standard machine does not support your own code, and the EDU version that does starts at USD 43,900.
AgiBot A2
The Yuanzheng A2 family is AgiBot's production line, covering a bipedal interaction robot, a wheeled industrial model, a heavy-duty model and a data-collection model. A2 holds the Guinness record for the longest walk by a humanoid robot.
Unitree R1
R1 is Unitree's low-cost humanoid, launched in July 2025 at CNY 39,900. At roughly a third of the G1 price it pushed the entry price for a walking humanoid below USD 6,000.
NEO
NEO is 1X's consumer home humanoid, opened for preorder on 28 October 2025 at USD 20,000 with deliveries planned for 2026. It is about 30 kg, tendon-driven and wears a soft suit, and it uses remote human operators for tasks it cannot yet do autonomously. It is the first humanoid marketed directly to households at a published price.
Sources
- 01ElektroWikipedia
- 02WABOTWikipedia
- 03
- 04ASIMOWikipedia
- 05HRP-2Wikipedia
- 06DARPA Robotics ChallengeWikipedia
- 07AtlasBoston Dynamics
- 08Pepper (robot)Wikipedia
- 09Optimus (robot)Wikipedia
- 10Unitree G1Unitree
- 11Unitree R1Unitree
- 12AgiBotAgiBot
- 131X NEO1X Technologies
How a humanoid robot works: actuators, compute, sensors and the model
Of 182 humanoids on record, 178 say what moves the joints and 43 say what computer is inside. The further a layer sits from the metal, the less the maker tells you about it.
Japan built the first humanoids, then stopped shipping them
Japan has 24 humanoids and 12 makers in our record, more than any country except China and the United States. Two of the 24 can be ordered today, and both were first shown in 2009.
Startups, automakers, universities: who builds humanoids
108 makers, nine kinds. Startups hold 37 of the 44 humanoids you can order. Automakers, universities, big tech, conglomerates and NASA hold 45 robots between them and sell none of them.