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.
We have not sat down with this one. The score below is computed from the data we hold, and the facts on this page are sourced. It is not on sale, so there is nothing to recommend.
How the score is built
Capability is what the machine physically does. Value compares it with others at a similar price, not with the whole market. Buyability asks whether you can really order one. Ecosystem is the software and community around it. Proof is what it has done in the field, which is where most humanoids score badly and should.
Similar money, different machine.
- Status
- Research
- Category
- research
- First revealed
- April 2025
- Form
- bipedal
- Height
- n/a
- Weight
- n/a
- Payload
- n/a
- Degrees of freedom
- 22
- Battery
- n/a
- Runtime
- n/a
- Walking speed
- n/a
- Actuation
- electric, 3D printed cycloidal gearboxes with off the shelf motors
- Units deployed (est.)
- not disclosed
- Teleoperation
- partial
Where it stands
Open source design that anyone can build for under 5,000 dollars in parts; not sold as a product.
What stands out
- Full hardware and software open source
- Under 5,000 dollars bill of materials
- 3D printed cycloidal actuators
Autonomy, observed
Paper shows learned walking and a whole body policy; videos of the robot walking and being teleoperated for manipulation
Supports a low cost teleoperation setup for data collection
Hands, sensors, brain
- Hands: optional simple grippers
- Sensors: IMU, joint encoders, camera
- Compute: onboard single board computer
- AI stack: reinforcement learning policies, open training code
Price and volume
bill of materials under 5,000 dollars
Built by several labs and hobbyists from the open design
Open source
Hardware and software released under open licences on GitHub
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.
Other robots by University of California, Berkeley.
Sources
- 01
- 02Berkeley Humanoid LiteUC Berkeley
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