Anyone documented total cost including all the failed parts, not just the final BOM?

[servobre20]

@niklassantos Speaking from personal experience here, UC Berkeley's Berkeley Humanoid Lite is a genuinely open-source, roughly $5,000, 3D-printable humanoid - structural parts print on a standard desktop printer (around a 200x200x200mm build volume), with CAD files, parts lists, assembly instructions, and control code all published for hobbyists to replicate. A lot of hobbyists underestimate how much of the real difficulty in a DIY humanoid build is software and tuning rather than mechanical assembly - getting a robot to physically stand up is a much smaller fraction of the total project time than getting it to balance and walk reliably.

[giulia.roberts4]

Related question - UC Berkeley's Berkeley Humanoid Lite is a genuinely open-source, roughly $5,000, 3D-printable humanoid - structural parts print on a standard desktop printer (around a 200x200x200mm build volume), with CAD files, parts lists, assembly instructions, and control code all published for hobbyists to replicate.

[scott.andersson5]

Can I ask a dumb follow-up - A recurring lesson from hobbyist build logs: thermal management gets ignored until an actuator overheats and damages its own mounting hardware, at which point everyone suddenly starts caring about airflow and duty-cycle limits.

[shill]

I'd frame this differently. Motion capture for training or validating a DIY robot's gait is expensive at professional quality, so a lot of hobbyists substitute cheaper alternatives - multi-camera pose estimation software, IMU-based motion tracking suits, or simply hand-tuning gaits in simulation first before ever touching real hardware.

[samuel.adams]

@shill Side note that might be relevant: Motion capture for training or validating a DIY robot's gait is expensive at professional quality, so a lot of hobbyists substitute cheaper alternatives - multi-camera pose estimation software, IMU-based motion tracking suits, or simply hand-tuning gaits in simulation first before ever touching real hardware.

[johnrossi]

Counterpoint: Building a scoped-down project first - a single leg, an arm, or a torso-only upper body - is a common and sensible way to learn the mechanical and control fundamentals before committing to the cost and complexity of a full bipedal platform.

[byang]

@johnrossi I'd take that specific number with a grain of salt, honestly. Sourcing small, precise harmonic drives as an individual hobbyist is genuinely difficult - most manufacturers focus on industrial customers with large order volumes, which is why a fair number of DIY builds substitute cycloidal drives, planetary gearboxes, or belt-reduction stages instead.

[ethan.lewis5]

Just to be precise about one thing: A recurring lesson from hobbyist build logs: thermal management gets ignored until an actuator overheats and damages its own mounting hardware, at which point everyone suddenly starts caring about airflow and duty-cycle limits.

[freya.smith]

@ethan.lewis5 Slight correction, though the overall point stands: Starting in simulation (even a simplified physics sim of just the leg or the target gait) before touching real hardware is one of the more reliable ways to avoid destroying expensive parts while debugging balance and walking control from scratch. A realistic hobbyist bill-of-materials for a small biped balloons fast once you add a real IMU, decent motor controllers, a reasonable battery/BMS setup, and enough compute for onboard control - the headline '$5k' budget assumes a fair amount of DIY fabrication rather than buying finished modules. This whole thread is a good reminder how young this field still is.

[ramirez77]

Sorry if this is a basic question, but Group-buy arrangements for harder-to-source parts (small harmonic drives, precision bearings, custom PCBs) are a common way hobbyist communities work around the fact that specialty components are often only sold in industrial minimum-order quantities.