UCLA researchers' open-source humanoid built around a smartphone, $400 total
From the Robots digest for 2026-10-18
What happened: MSN syndication (published ~8:45 PM ET Oct 18, 2026) reports UCLA researchers built a $400 humanoid robot around cheap phone technology — an open-source humanoid that walks, tracks people, and gets back up using inexpensive hardware and a smartphone in place of conventional compute. The window's delta is the specific total cost: the $400 figure against earlier coverage that named only the price of the phone component.
What's genuinely new: A debut — no UCLA entry exists in the storyline memory; this is the record's first low-cost research-humanoid datapoint, and its first open-source-because-cheap design framing from a university lab. All claims are syndication grade: the $400 total figure, the open-source designation, and the walking/tracking/self-righting capabilities carry no paper, video, or bill-of-materials in capture, and the record's past self-righting and walking claims have repeatedly needed teleop share checked before they hold.
Watch: The underlying paper or design release and what "open-source" covers (hardware, software, or both), the autonomy share behind the walking and self-righting demos, the smartphone-as-brain architecture's limits, and whether any lab-published task results land at video or paper grade.
Links: MSN