A premapped course, a crew of handlers and a world-beating time: here’s what this Beijing half marathon reveals about how far humanoid robots have come—and how far they haven’t

We are now in the humanoid robot era, and they're starting to show up in our homes. But are they any good? And what's the path to improvement?

For decades, humanoid robots have lived behind safety cages in factories or deep inside research labs. Fauna Robotics, a New York-based robotics startup, says that era is ending. The company has introduced Sprout, a compact humanoid robot designed from the ...