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HumanoidDuke University General Robotics Lab2024US

Duke Humanoid v1

Open-source 10-DOF research biped for energy-efficient RL locomotion exploiting passive dynamics.

researchResearch onlyL1 Compiledbuildable

Difficulty index

9.3/13
9.3
Index breakdown
Classhumanoid+5
Costunknown · midpoint+1.5
DOF10 DOF+1
Parts602 parts+1.8
How the index works

Top of the ladder. This robot lives on the humanoid domains.

Specimen photographs

2 items
  • Duke Humanoid v1 legs, photo sequence of a walking gait
    From the DukeHumanoidv1 README.General Robotics Lab, Duke University (DukeHumanoidv1) · MIT · source
  • The Duke Humanoid: Design and Control For Energy Efficient Bipedal Locomotion Using Passive DynamicsGeneral Robotics Lab · official video, embedded · source

Spec card

3/13 known
Degrees of freedom
10
Price
not for sale
Part count
602

Not in the registry: height, mass, payload, speed, runtime, battery, bom total, actuators, compute, sensors. Left blank rather than guessed.

What you learn building it

  • +Whole-body control
  • +Dozens of actuators on one bus
  • +Balance and fall handling
  • +Safe bring-up of a full-size machine
  • +CNC machining: 65 parts
  • +FDM 3D printing: 25 parts
  • +Tools used: FDM printer (lab used Bambu Lab X1C and Prusa MK4), Smooth PEI (PLA) and textured PEI (TPU) sheets, Heat gun, Hex keys (wiki recommends Bondhus), Hex keys, Soldering iron, Multimeter, Crimp tool +7
  • +18 assembly steps across 6 subassemblies
  • +Flashing firmware for teensy_comm (Teensy 4.0 sensor hub), Elmo drive parameters (.gprm per joint pair), ethercat_motor_py (host EtherCAT master, SOEM)
  • +Testing in simulation (URDF/MJCF) before touching hardware
  • +Running published learned policies

Openness

85/100
  • publicCAD
  • publicBOM
  • not publicFirmware
  • publicSim model
  • publicSoftware
  • publicPolicies

Score 85/100 computed from what is public: CAD 25, BOM 20, sim 20, firmware 15, software 10, policies 10. Software license: MIT.

Repos & models

URDF ↗
SiteDocsVideo

Build it

Has an ORP build package.
Build it on humanoidrobot.build ↗

Simulate

Load it in the browser simulator and train a policy before building.

Open on humanoidrobots.training ↗

Next rung

None. This is the top. Find people building it on humanoidrobots.team.

This is the top of the ladder.

NotePaper arXiv:2409.19795. Hardware wiki on Notion holds the BOM, CNC/DIY CAD zips and Fusion files; the GitHub repo holds code, URDF and policies. The repo is MIT; the Notion CAD has no stated license. v1 is legs only on a box body and tethered (48 V bench supplies, external Linux PC over EtherCAT); motors and drives are quote-only from Motorevo. Repo inactive since Jun 2025; the lab published Duke Humanoid V2 repos in Aug-Sep 2026 (generalroboticslab/duke_humanoid_v2).

Sources

  1. [1]Official repochecked 2026-09-24
  2. [2]arXiv paperchecked 2026-09-24
  3. [3]Duke Humanoid V1 hardware wiki (Notion: BOM, CAD, power, EtherCAT)checked 2026-09-25
  4. [4]duke_humanoid_v2 repo (created 2026-08-25)checked 2026-09-25