DARwIn-OP
DARwIn-OP (Dynamic Anthropomorphic Robot with Intelligence, Open Platform) is a 45 cm open hardware and open software humanoid developed by Virginia Tech's RoMeLa lab with Purdue, Penn and Robotis under a US National Science Foundation grant. Released in late 2010, it became the standard kid size platform in RoboCup and in university teaching. Robotis productised it and followed with OP2 and OP3.
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
- Discontinued
- Category
- research
- First revealed
- December 2010
- Form
- bipedal
- Height
- 45.5 cm
- Weight
- 2.9 kg
- Payload
- n/a
- Degrees of freedom
- 20
- Battery
- n/a
- Runtime
- n/a
- Walking speed
- n/a
- Actuation
- electric, Dynamixel MX-28 servos
- Units deployed (est.)
- not disclosed
- Teleoperation
- no
Where it stands
Succeeded by ROBOTIS OP2 and OP3.
What stands out
- Fully open hardware and software
- NSF funded academic platform
- Standard RoboCup kid size robot of the 2010s
Autonomy, observed
Widely used in the RoboCup Humanoid League kid size class, where DARwIn-OP teams won championships
Hands, sensors, brain
- Hands: none
- Sensors: camera, IMU, joint encoders
- Compute: Intel Atom based single board computer
- AI stack: open source walking and vision framework
Price and volume
approximately 12,000 dollars at launch
Hundreds sold to universities
Open source
Mechanical drawings, electronics and code released publicly
Milestones.
DARwIn-OP open humanoid platform is released
Virginia Tech's RoMeLa lab, Purdue, Penn and Robotis release DARwIn-OP, a 45 cm open hardware and open software humanoid funded by the US National Science Foundation. It becomes the base of Robotis' OP2 and OP3 kid size research robots.
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.
Humanoid races, games and fights: what the competitions proved
Our record holds 11 competition events from 1997 to 2025 and 17 machines tied to them. Six can be ordered, three at a public price, and 13 of the 17 carry a teleoperation flag of yes or partial.
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.
Other robots by Robotis.
ROBOTIS MINI
ROBOTIS MINI is a 27 cm desktop humanoid built on DYNAMIXEL servos, controlled with block coding or Python. A safe, durable first robot for schools, and the smallest member of the family that runs up to the full-size OP3.
ROBOTIS OP3
ROBOTIS OP3 is the third generation of the open platform humanoid line that started with DARwIn-OP. It is a 51 cm, 3.5 kg kid size research robot with 20 degrees of freedom, an Intel NUC and a ROS based open source software stack. It is used in RoboCup and in teaching labs worldwide.
THORMANG3
THORMANG3 is a modular full size humanoid built by Robotis from its Dynamixel Pro actuators and released in 2015 for research teams, including at the DARPA Robotics Challenge finals. It runs an open source ROS framework and was sold to universities worldwide. It represents the DRC era of modular research humanoids.
Sources
- 01DARwIn-OPWikipedia
- 02ROBOTIS OPRobotis
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