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Your Personal Open-Source Humanoid Robot for $8,999 — JX Mo, K-Scale Labs
Takeaway
K-Scale is making developer-grade humanoids affordable and fully open-source so hobbyists can program locomotion and VLA policies the way they pip-install libraries.
Summary
- K-Scale Labs sells the 4'11" K-Bot humanoid at $9K (vs Unitree at ~$40K) and a 1.5ft Z-Bot, both with open BOM, CAD, PCB, firmware, and ML weights.
- K-Bot uses MIT Cheetah actuators, up to 250 TOPS compute, RL locomotion controllers trained in MJX, and modular end-effectors (5-DoF arm swap to 7-DoF, gripper or 5-finger hand).
- Python/Rust SDK 'pip install kos' exposes a gRPC interface identical between real robot and KSim digital twin — switch by changing IP address.
- Stack supports VLA policies (Pi-Zero, Nvidia GR00T) and the team runs monthly hackathons; Discord has ~5000 members with hundreds of 3D-printed Z-Bots built.
- Vision: an 'app store' of Python apps for humanoids that any developer can write and share.
roboticshumanoidopen-source
Original description
Introducing developer ready robots that are open-source, affordable, and easy to use. https://www.kscale.dev/ About Jingxiang Mo Jingxiang Mo is a founding engineer at K-Scale Labs, where he leads the fast-moving, open-source development of general-purpose humanoid robots. His work spans the full stack—from training end-to-end reinforcement-learning policies on in-house infrastructure to building the robot operating system and shipping mass-manufactured hardware such as the 5 feet tall K-Bot and 1.5 feet tall Z-Bot humanoid robots. Recorded at the AI Engineer World's Fair in San Francisco. Stay up to date on our upcoming events and content by joining our newsletter here: https://www.ai.engineer/newsletter