_version_ 1866910001762664448
author Robotics, Fauna
:
Aldarondo, Diego
Pervan, Ana
Corbalan, Daniel
Petrillo, Dave
Dai, Bolun
Iyer, Aadhithya
Mortensen, Nina
Pearson, Erik
Arunachalam, Sridhar Pandian
Reznick, Emma
Weis, David
Davison, Jacob
Patterson, Samuel
Carella, Tess
Suguitan, Michael
Ye, David
Ferro, Oswaldo
Suriyarachchi, Nilesh
Ling, Spencer
Su, Erik
Giebisch, Daniel
Traver, Peter
Fonseca, Sam
Mor, Mack
Singh, Rohan
Guven, Sertac
Liu, Kangni
Orru, Yaswanth Kumar
Batcha, Ashiq Rahman Anwar
Ravindranath, Shruthi
Arora, Silky
Ponte, Hugo
Hernandez, Dez
Chaudhary, Utsav
Walker, Zack
Kelberman, Michael
Veloz, Ivan
Lucia, Christina Santa
Casale, Kat
Han, Helen
Gromis, Michael
Mignatti, Michael
Reisman, Jason
Guerin, Kelleher
Narvaez, Dario
Anderson, Christopher
Moschella, Anthony
Cochran, Robert
Merel, Josh
author_facet Robotics, Fauna
:
Aldarondo, Diego
Pervan, Ana
Corbalan, Daniel
Petrillo, Dave
Dai, Bolun
Iyer, Aadhithya
Mortensen, Nina
Pearson, Erik
Arunachalam, Sridhar Pandian
Reznick, Emma
Weis, David
Davison, Jacob
Patterson, Samuel
Carella, Tess
Suguitan, Michael
Ye, David
Ferro, Oswaldo
Suriyarachchi, Nilesh
Ling, Spencer
Su, Erik
Giebisch, Daniel
Traver, Peter
Fonseca, Sam
Mor, Mack
Singh, Rohan
Guven, Sertac
Liu, Kangni
Orru, Yaswanth Kumar
Batcha, Ashiq Rahman Anwar
Ravindranath, Shruthi
Arora, Silky
Ponte, Hugo
Hernandez, Dez
Chaudhary, Utsav
Walker, Zack
Kelberman, Michael
Veloz, Ivan
Lucia, Christina Santa
Casale, Kat
Han, Helen
Gromis, Michael
Mignatti, Michael
Reisman, Jason
Guerin, Kelleher
Narvaez, Dario
Anderson, Christopher
Moschella, Anthony
Cochran, Robert
Merel, Josh
contents Recent advances in learned control, large-scale simulation, and generative models have accelerated progress toward general-purpose robotic controllers, yet the field still lacks platforms suitable for safe, expressive, long-term deployment in human environments. Most existing humanoids are either closed industrial systems or academic prototypes that are difficult to deploy and operate around people, limiting progress in robotics. We introduce Sprout, a developer platform designed to address these limitations through an emphasis on safety, expressivity, and developer accessibility. Sprout adopts a lightweight form factor with compliant control, limited joint torques, and soft exteriors to support safe operation in shared human spaces. The platform integrates whole-body control, manipulation with integrated grippers, and virtual-reality-based teleoperation within a unified hardware-software stack. An expressive head further enables social interaction -- a domain that remains underexplored on most utilitarian humanoids. By lowering physical and technical barriers to deployment, Sprout expands access to capable humanoid platforms and provides a practical basis for developing embodied intelligence in real human environments.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_18963
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Fauna Sprout: A lightweight, approachable, developer-ready humanoid robot
Robotics, Fauna
:
Aldarondo, Diego
Pervan, Ana
Corbalan, Daniel
Petrillo, Dave
Dai, Bolun
Iyer, Aadhithya
Mortensen, Nina
Pearson, Erik
Arunachalam, Sridhar Pandian
Reznick, Emma
Weis, David
Davison, Jacob
Patterson, Samuel
Carella, Tess
Suguitan, Michael
Ye, David
Ferro, Oswaldo
Suriyarachchi, Nilesh
Ling, Spencer
Su, Erik
Giebisch, Daniel
Traver, Peter
Fonseca, Sam
Mor, Mack
Singh, Rohan
Guven, Sertac
Liu, Kangni
Orru, Yaswanth Kumar
Batcha, Ashiq Rahman Anwar
Ravindranath, Shruthi
Arora, Silky
Ponte, Hugo
Hernandez, Dez
Chaudhary, Utsav
Walker, Zack
Kelberman, Michael
Veloz, Ivan
Lucia, Christina Santa
Casale, Kat
Han, Helen
Gromis, Michael
Mignatti, Michael
Reisman, Jason
Guerin, Kelleher
Narvaez, Dario
Anderson, Christopher
Moschella, Anthony
Cochran, Robert
Merel, Josh
Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
Recent advances in learned control, large-scale simulation, and generative models have accelerated progress toward general-purpose robotic controllers, yet the field still lacks platforms suitable for safe, expressive, long-term deployment in human environments. Most existing humanoids are either closed industrial systems or academic prototypes that are difficult to deploy and operate around people, limiting progress in robotics. We introduce Sprout, a developer platform designed to address these limitations through an emphasis on safety, expressivity, and developer accessibility. Sprout adopts a lightweight form factor with compliant control, limited joint torques, and soft exteriors to support safe operation in shared human spaces. The platform integrates whole-body control, manipulation with integrated grippers, and virtual-reality-based teleoperation within a unified hardware-software stack. An expressive head further enables social interaction -- a domain that remains underexplored on most utilitarian humanoids. By lowering physical and technical barriers to deployment, Sprout expands access to capable humanoid platforms and provides a practical basis for developing embodied intelligence in real human environments.
title Fauna Sprout: A lightweight, approachable, developer-ready humanoid robot
topic Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.18963