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 press imageThe verdict
Twenty-seven centimetres of DYNAMIXEL servos and block coding. It is the safest way to put a walking humanoid in front of a twelve year old, and it plugs into the same ecosystem as ROBOTIS machines used in serious labs.
- Buy it if
- Schools and first-time buyers who want durability over specification.
- Skip it if
- You are past the introduction stage.
In its favour
- Genuinely durable servos
- Block coding and Python
- Path upward into the OP3
Against it
- Very small
- No vision out of the box
- Distributor-dependent pricing
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
- Commercial
- Category
- education
- First revealed
- n/a
- Form
- bipedal
- Height
- 27 cm
- Weight
- n/a
- Payload
- n/a
- Degrees of freedom
- 16
- Battery
- n/a
- Runtime
- n/a
- Walking speed
- n/a
- Actuation
- DYNAMIXEL XL-320 smart servos
- Units deployed (est.)
- not disclosed
- Teleoperation
- unknown
What stands out
- $539 desktop humanoid
- DYNAMIXEL servos, block coding
- Same ecosystem as the full-size OP3
Hands, sensors, brain
- Sensors: gyroscope for balance
Price and volume
27 cm desktop humanoid with block coding, aimed at schools.
Index position
In the Humanoid Index, which ranks on shipped reality rather than value for money, ROBOTIS MINI sits at #59 of 107 with 36 points: deployment 14/50, autonomy 2/30, availability 20/20. See that method.
Deposits, lead times and warranties: reading a humanoid order sheet
Of 42 buy records, 2 publish a deposit, 1 a warranty, 1 a shipping cost and none a lead time in weeks. The order sheet for a humanoid is mostly blank, and the blanks are where the money goes.
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.
Humanoid robot stocks: which of the 108 makers are actually listed
Twenty of the 108 makers in our record have a ticker. Four of them will sell you a humanoid. The rest build cars, chips, servers and washing machines, and the pure plays are all private.
Other robots by Robotis.
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.
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
- 015 best affordable humanoid robotsKeyi Robot · 2026-07-01
Price sources
- 015 best affordable humanoid robotsKeyi Robot · 2026-07-01
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