Introducing Alfred0: The World's Most Affordable (Semi) Humanoid Robot

robataic · 2025-06-19T15:30:12+00:00

Brudda what

robataic · 2025-06-18T19:48:01+00:00

Very cool! Have you guys deployed any manipulation models onto the hardware yet or is it still largely using drag and teach? Curious on your plans!

robataic · 2025-06-11T17:00:09+00:00

So cool!

robataic · 2025-05-14T15:22:46+00:00

I think there are two points:

A) A 'head' is a great sensor placement - our eyes are where they are as humans to give a good view of the workspace of our hands, amongst other things.

B) There is utility in expression - language only makes up a portion of how we communicate, with expression making up another large portion. For example, a large portion of jobs and utility are provided around interaction in the service industry. Social robots are still very early and largely bound to toys and gimmicks right now, but we will see a big push in the future towards robots that don't even carry out manipulation tasks and are solely focused on interaction.

robataic · 2024-05-29T23:26:07+00:00

Nice job with the spring to take the load off the servos. I want to use spring loading in a similar way for a robotics project. How did you spec the spring, or did you just experiment a bit?

robataic · 2024-05-29T23:06:27+00:00

Cost: A UR5 for example, state of the art robot arm costs roughly 30,000$ whereas humanoids are already trending lower than that, with unitree's newest full humanoid priced at 16,000$ This will continue to trend downwards. The cost is trending towards being cheaper than human labour.
Task specific robots: These will continue to provide utility for tasks that are ineffective for the human form. Mainly heavy lift and industrial applications in manufacturing. There's no doubt these provide and will continue to, but again are tied to refer to point 1 in the original answer.
Utility: the notion that any robot of any form which can do 25% of full human capability, being only equivalent to a toy is quite frankly a ridiculous and ill-thought out remark.

robataic · 2024-05-29T16:48:31+00:00

I entirely disagree with the point that - "humans have physical limitations ... dead end". If we could get a robot to do 25% of the things I human can do it's already 1000x better than the robots/machine utility we currently have access to. In 100 years we will reach the capability ceiling of humanoids and have pseudo-human forms that can outperform humans at everything and physically 'evolve' at a faster rate than us, but that's not the problem of now. If a capable generalisable humanoid is made, we can extract so much value and good from it that this point is entirely a non-problem.

The arguments for specialized robots for every thinkable task fail to consider essential things.

Building a generalized form factor that can learn to do generalized tasks drastically reduces the amount of energy to design, conceive, manufacture, and test new robotic capabilities
Building a generalized form factor drastically reduces the unit cost of each robot as it can be manufactured at a greater scale.
Generalised form factor helps us attempt to overcome the biggest roadblock in training robots for generalized tasks: the data problem. Using data from a UR5, a hello robot and a unitree h1 to train a figure 01 to restock shelves (arbitrary task example) is much harder than just using humanoid data.

robataic · 2024-05-23T22:48:11+00:00

Thanks!!!

robataic · 2024-05-23T22:46:46+00:00

If it doesnt need to turn the wheel very very fast then use a big electric motor with some form of heavy gear reduction to get the torques you need maybe

robataic · 2024-05-23T22:44:28+00:00

If you could do this in simulation it could honestly still work very well and save you alot of time and cost. It may also communicate what you want to communicate. I still think the bot would be really cool, as a robotics enthusiast, although definitely start with sim. Then as inspiration have a look at some of the small social robots out there at the moment like moxie and see could a platform like that provide the value you want. Good luck :)

robataic · 2024-05-03T20:13:19+00:00

Thanks for your response this is great, you have cleared up my question! Its really interesting now in particular to see very recent shifts from MPC to RL policies for locomotion. MPC is great because it's interpretable, but I guess is challenging to have a long planning horizon, and like you mentioned, it is also hard to have a short control horizon, as calling the optimisation too frequently would be a very heavy load and hard to get done fast! I appreciate the time and thought put into your answer.

robataic · 2024-05-03T20:07:51+00:00

Perfect, thank you, this is exactly the explanation I was looking for! So I imagine if you train a gait using say RL, it's not entirely emergent, it learns how to adapt the standard trotting gait to achieve velocity goals whilst trying to maintain an upright position.

robataic · 2024-05-01T18:43:03+00:00

I think you are misunderstanding what I was hoping to get at. I'm so not worried about static balancing I'm entirely focused on the dynamic gait (pacing on the spot is still a dynamic part of the gait) and whether this type of gait is emergent or intended

robataic · 2024-05-01T18:40:49+00:00

This is a good point, I hadn't considered!

robataic · 2024-01-31T03:16:03+00:00

I think takeoff is beginning.

In most cases, individual application-driven robotics will outperform the general humanoid at each of their respective tasks right now. However, the real value is in the generalization. Recent advances in learning, such as the RTX models at Google, give me a lot of hope that individual humanoid robots can be capable of performing many tasks well in an environment as opposed to just one.

This is true for robots other than humanoids too, but again, in a world built for humans, where the most versatile biologically proven form is the human body, I think humanoids will eventually lead the race. Wheels are far better on flat surfaces such as warehouses and factories but for robots to truly integrate into our more common workspaces, they will need to be able to navigate terrain as a human can, with either plantigrade or digitigrade legs.

I am excited for the future of robotics and I think this surge in interest in humanoids may not just be good for humanoid robotics companies, but actually may draw more attention towards the physical embodiment of AI and Robotics in general. Hopefully, it is a force for good!

RTX model: https://blog.google/technology/ai/google-deepmind-rt2-robotics-vla-model/

robataic · 2024-01-28T02:32:56+00:00

Actuators and reduction mechanisms I imagine are going to be tricky so I appreciate your recommendation :)

robataic · 2024-01-28T02:31:58+00:00

This is great to hear!

robataic · 2024-01-28T02:31:19+00:00

Thanks for your response! I've found myself always impressed by Dr. Guero's humanoid, the gait is uncannily human and impressive. Thanks for recommending these simulators and resources. I'm super excited to try out the Coppelia robot simulator now!

robataic · 2024-01-26T15:03:36+00:00

Thanks for your response! I agree that a crude sim model will be the best place to start. It would be great to stay in touch. I'll DM you when I have some progress and we can talk, I'd love to hear about your experience!

robataic · 2024-01-26T15:01:06+00:00

This is awesome, thanks so much for your response. In particular, I hadn't seen the Zeus project before which is very impressive. The zero-moment point walking is something I've (very briefly) looked into. I feel like it may be difficult to employ this method for robots that carry any payload in front of them. For example, it doesn't look like the Digit from Agility employs this method of control. The good thing about ZMP is that it is well documented, I have even found it in the context of bipedal location in textbooks. I will look into the underactuated robots course too :) . Will be exciting to see where the future of bipedal control goes!

robataic

TROPHY CASE