Hugging Face shares $2,500 3D-printable humanoid robot legs project

In short: Hugging Face has released a $2,500 open project for humanoid robot legs that people can build and use for robotics experiments.

What happened

Hugging Face, a company known for AI development tools, published a new project called LeRobot Humanoid. It focuses on a pair of bipedal robot legs made from 3D-printed parts and off-the-shelf components. The estimated cost is about $2,500.

The release includes practical build materials, like a bill of materials (a shopping list of parts), 3D-print files, wiring guides, and assembly instructions. It also includes software to help users calibrate and control the legs. Calibration means making sure sensors and motors agree on what “straight” and “bent” actually are, like setting a scale to zero before weighing something.

Hugging Face’s Virgile Batto wrote that this is not meant to be the most advanced humanoid robot. Instead, the goal is a robot that people can build, understand, repair, modify, and simulate. Simulation is a computer-made practice space, like a flight simulator for pilots.

Why it matters

Humanoid robots can be very expensive, with some commercial models costing tens of thousands of dollars. A lower-cost, buildable platform could make it easier for researchers and builders to test how AI-powered robot control works in the real world, not just on a screen. Hugging Face says this is part of a broader push toward more affordable, open robotics projects, and it has also discussed future steps like adding an upper body.

Source: Arstechnica