University of California, Berkeley
UC Berkeley's Hybrid Robotics Lab led by Koushil Sreenath built the Berkeley Humanoid in 2024 and released the open source Berkeley Humanoid Lite in 2025 to make humanoid research affordable.
- Type
- university
- Headquarters
- Berkeley, California, United States
- Founded
- 1868
- Founders
- n/a
- Status
- active
- Employees (est.)
- n/d
- Disclosed funding
- n/d
- Valuation
- n/d
- Listed
- private
- Website
- berkeley.edu
What the record says.
The University of California, Berkeley, founded in 1868, hosts the Hybrid Robotics Lab under Koushil Sreenath, the source of the two humanoids in this record. Both are cheap research platforms for reinforcement-learning control, not products.
Berkeley Humanoid, described in a paper submitted on 31 July 2024 by Qiayuan Liao, Bike Zhang, Xuanyu Huang, Xiaoyu Huang, Zhongyu Li and Sreenath, is a lightweight mid-scale biped built to keep the gap between simulation and hardware small. The paper shows it walking hundreds of metres outdoors, on steep unpaved trails and hopping on one and two legs. No unit count, price or licence is given on the project site.
Berkeley Humanoid Lite, published in April 2025 (arXiv 2504.17249) by Yufeng Chi, Liao, Junfeng Long, Xiaoyu Huang, Sophia Shao, Borivoje Nikolic, Li and Sreenath, goes further on cost: a 0.8 m, 16 kg robot with 22 cycloidal gearboxes printed on a desktop FDM printer, off-the-shelf motors and a bill of materials of about USD 4,300 in the US or USD 3,200 in China. Hardware, firmware and training code are open source on GitHub. It can walk, write with a marker and solve a Rubik's Cube, with roughly 30 minutes of battery. Its value is as a template others can build, not a deployed machine.
2 humanoids tracked.
Berkeley Humanoid
Berkeley Humanoid is a mid sized, low cost bipedal research robot from UC Berkeley's Hybrid Robotics Lab, presented in a July 2024 paper as a reliable platform for learning based control. It was designed to be built and repaired by a small team and to survive many falls. It led to the fully open source Berkeley Humanoid Lite in 2025.
Berkeley Humanoid Lite
Berkeley Humanoid Lite is a fully open source, 3D printed, mid sized humanoid from UC Berkeley intended to make humanoid research accessible. All hardware, firmware, simulation and training code are public and the parts cost under 5,000 dollars. It uses 3D printed cycloidal actuators that can be rebuilt after failure.
Open-source humanoids: what you can actually build
24 of the 182 humanoids on record call themselves open source. 15 publish hardware files and software, 3 name a licence, 12 can be ordered, and none of the four on preorder has any autonomy evidence yet.
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.
China builds, America demos: what 108 makers tell you
Chinese makers account for 65 of the 182 humanoids in our record and 31 of the 44 you can order. American makers hold the money, the research and most of the autonomy claims, and sell you almost nothing.
Sources
- 01Berkeley HumanoidUC Berkeley
- 02
- 03
- 04
- 05