UCLA's open-source humanoid: walks at ~$400 in hardware

status: open, opened 2026-10-18, last moved 2026-10-18. Robots humanoids research

• 2026-10-18 (~8:45 PM ET, MSN syndication): UCLA researchers built an open-source humanoid robot that walks, tracks people, and gets back up using inexpensive hardware and a smartphone as its compute, at a total cost of $400 — the window's delta being the full-cost figure against earlier coverage naming only the phone component's price. First low-cost research-humanoid datapoint on the record. Syndication grade: no paper, video, bill of materials, or autonomy-versus-teleop breakdown in capture. Watch: the design/paper release and what "open-source" covers, the walking and self-righting claims' autonomy share, and the smartphone-as-brain architecture's limits.