We are a team of students building an open-source humanoid robot with modular hardware.

Our goal is to create a shared platform that lowers the barrier to humanoid robotics research and development.

• Develop a cheap, fully functional bipedal humanoid capable of walking
• Create a modular mechanical and electrical platform capable of supporting a library of different components (eg, swappable grippers / feet)
• Build an open-source community to advance education and research in humanoid development

We plan to start by creating the leg, which we believe will be helpful for rapid development and in setting the stage to achieve full-body modularity. Our goals for the leg are that:

• The leg can work in both quadrupedal and bipedal settings.
• Has easily swappable components—sensors, motors, etc.
• We also want a robust method to estimate the load capacity of any busts the leg would support.

The most important implication is that we want to design a standard mechanical and electrical attachment interface at our different joints (ankle, knee, hip).

We want to support modular foot geometries (flat pad, gripper toes, wheels, ...) as well as easily swappable motors and sensors (pressure pads, full 6-axis F/T, ...)

We also want to support modular knees which will facilitate easier transformations between bipeds and quadrupeds, only requiring a knee replacement rather than an entirely new leg.

We are currently exploring a belt-like actuation design where the motors are all centered around the hip joint.

While we are currently working on the leg, we plan to integrate it first into getting a quadruped to walk by the end of summer.

Then in the fall, we plan to develop a human torso which can attach onto the quadruped, creating a "centaur" design capable of manipulation tasks using our quadrupedal base.

By next year, we hope to integrate them all into a working humanoid.