Building a humanoid for agentic robotics

[u/eck72]

Agents are going to live with us, and the human form factor is the one that generalizes best in our world. So we've been heads down building a humanoid robot that agents can embody.

A bit of back story. We started with a Unitree G1 last year to build an ecosystem allowing agents to control robot. It didn't work. G1 hardware is proprietary, the parts are custom and every repair goes through the manufacturers or resellers. We noticed that if agents are going to live in our homes, their bodies/robots should be built in a way they can understand every single part and easy to repair. We need to be able to fix them, change them and see what they run, including the safety layer.

So we built Asimov 1 from off-the-shelf parts. With the bill of materials you can source the parts and build one yourself. Everything we built is open, the CAD, the SDK for communication, Edge for safety, the locomotion policy and the training code as a foundation for agents and people to build on top of.

It's still early for agentic robotics. Asimov 1 walks, but there's a lot we haven't figured out yet and we're learning as we go. We'd rather do that in the open for agents and also with more people building alongside us. Planning to focus to agent layer now.

If you've been thinking about building a robot, now is a good time. You can build your own, fork ours, or pick any open-source robot and push it further. The more open bodies there are, the faster agents will learn to live with us.

The repo to build your own: https://github.com/menloresearch/asimov-1

We're also putting together a user manual for building your own humanoids robots from scratch: https://docs.menlo.ai/asimov/1/overview

Really appreciate to hear your thoughts on agentic robotics and Asimov 1.

[u/enilea]

You could make a benchmark where you give an AI agent access to the SDK and live camera feed and it has to complete different sets of tasks in a reasonable amount of time. The current scores would be close to 0% since the best models are too slow and fast models are too bad, but it would be a good test for AGI and everyone likes benchmarks that start out at 0%.

[u/eck72 → u/enilea]

We need more benchmarks for humanoids. We're on it!

I think your comment is also a good chance for me to open a thinking exercise on how we think about agentic robots.

We can borrow Kahneman's System 1 and System 2 idea - system 1 is fast and automatic, like catching a ball, and System 2 is slow and deliberate, like planning your day. It could work for agentic robotics. The agent is System 2, thinks things through and decides what to do. The skills are System 1, react fast and turn those decisions into commands. Under them, the walking policy and the motors handle the movement, so the agent never has to think about moving a joint.

Interesting that building an ecosystem where agents can understand the robot and its communication layer, and also train their own skills to live among us.

Might be a bit off here since I'm simplifying things.

[u/Psykohistorian → u/eck72]

I've seen this same 2-tier system in other agentic projects. it does work. a "nervous system" and a "thinking brain", connected but separate and responsible for different things.

[u/OpticalOutlaw → u/enilea]

Like Apptronic and Google Gemini 4 Argon, or also GPT 6 Astra, which also can control robots.

[u/space_monster]

what's the bom cost

[u/eck72 → u/space_monster]

For the full robot walking in the video, if you're sourcing all the parts yourself, it's around $30k. We've published the full BOM so people can source parts for specific projects, like just the legs or the arms Really encourage people to start by building parts of it using the BOM.

https://reddit.com/link/19rffyjwdrmmb/video/8a80rkwykswh1/player

We've also opened a DIY kit version that we bulk order for the community, which brings the price down to $20k, covering D2D shipping and tariffs.

[u/space_monster → u/eck72]

$20k is pretty reasonable. too rich for my blood right now though :)

[u/IrisColt → u/eck72]

Thanks, the video is no longer available according to the site.

[u/datalord]

Awesome work.

How much of these do you think can be 3D Printed for at home testing. Obviously different applications will require better materials, but for prototyping is it all mostly printable?

How, if at all, are you working on solutions like Figure has for training data?

[u/eck72 → u/datalord]

Appreciate it!

A lot of it is printable. We use MJF PA12 nylon for the printed parts, so those you can print for testing at home. The frame is 7075 aluminum, and the actuators and electronics are off-the-shelf. So, for prototyping you'd print the plastic parts and buy the rest.

For training data, the locomotion policy is trained in simulation with Isaac Lab or MJLab using the MJCF/URDF models we publish. The training code is open too, so you can retrain it for your own gait or terrain. Beyond walking, the SDK streams joint states, currents, temperatures, IMU data and 720p video, so you can log real-world data and train skills on it for your own use case. We're also building teleoperation on top of that.

Quick links. The materials are broken down here, and the full parts list is here. Sharing this one for you to check SDK capabilities.

[u/bgeorgewalker]

If I don’t know anything about robots or programming how hard would this be to do? How long would it take to learn?

[u/eck72 → u/bgeorgewalker]

Short answer: If you want to go with Asimov 1, it takes around 20 hours to build if you follow the user manual, but expect 100+ hours if you're learning as you go, breaking and fixing things along the way.

I'm not an expert on learning paths, but I think learning by doing is one of the best ways in - just start somewhere. Asimov 1 is a good project to learn from, but it's a big one. I'd start with a simple robotic arm, it might be easier. Hugging Face has great resources for this through LeRobot, and the SO-101 arm is a really nice first project. Agents can also help a lot when you get stuck.

[u/InAtTheGeekEnd]

Clearly pissed as a newt!!!

[u/DragonKing2223]

Very nice! I've always wanted to work on agentic robotics, but unfortunately I haven't got the personal finances to do so yet.

If you've ever played a factory game before, one of the most important milestones is building a MAM (make anything machine), that can make anything you would care to make just by reprogramming it, and once you gave it things can really take off. With our current level of tech, I feel like we aren't quite there yet, but it's close.

I have yet to see anyone try to benchmark if an agentic system involving a humanoid robot could take a part, design a tool path, put the stock in the machine, and run it to make a useful part, but I think that's one of the most important starting points for a real world MAM. Reduce enough processes to automatable steps like that and things really start changing fast