Stanford University (ToddlerBot project)

Stanford University was founded in 1885 in Stanford, California, and has for decades been among the leading academic centers for robotics and artificial intelligence in the United States. The university itself, however, is not a robot manufacturer, and the entry in our catalog concerns a specific project: ToddlerBot, an open-source research humanoid that came out of the Hybrid Robotics Lab. The project was described publicly in February 2025 in a scientific paper on arXiv, and materials are available on the project website. Neither the university nor the team gives, details on funding or on the founding date of the lab itself, so we do not add them. What matters more to the reader is how such a project works: the design, drawings and software are released so that other teams can rebuild the robot, modify it and use it for their own research. That is a different logic from the commercial firms described in “How Does a Humanoid Robot Work”. A related lab is covered in the profile Stanford University — Hybrid Robotics Lab, and the general picture of hardware for learning in “Educational Robots for Schools and Universities”. The entry on the university should therefore be read as a description of one well-documented project, not of the whole institution.

One model is tied to the university in our catalog: ToddlerBot, a small humanoid in the educational robots category. It weighs 3.7 kg, has 30 degrees of freedom (DOF) — the term is explained in “Degrees of Freedom (DOF) in Humanoid Robots” — and its parts are designed for 3D printing. The team shows the robot walking, doing push-ups and pull-ups, pushing a cart and using both hands at once. The status in our catalog is prototype, with no commercial price: the robot is described as a cheap open-source platform, but no figure is given. There is also no data on battery life or height, so we do not state them. In practice the buyer is not an end customer but a lab, a university or an enthusiast ready to build the robot from parts. This approach allows experiments with reinforcement learning and control models, which we cover in “VLA Models: How AI Controls Humanoid Robots in 2026”, without the cost of a commercial humanoid; the scale of those costs is shown in “How Much Does a Humanoid Robot Cost in 2026”. The lack of a price follows from the nature of the project: cost depends on where the servos, electronics and printing filament are bought, and on exchange rates.

ToddlerBot does not compete in the market in the usual sense, because it is not sold as a product. Its place is defined by other open research and education platforms: ROBOTIS with the ROBOTIS OP3, the French Rhoban Football Club with the SigmaBan, or arm and robot projects built on the Hugging Face library. Stanford's advantage is the university's reputation and the number of degrees of freedom in such a light, printed structure; the weakness is the lack of an official price, guaranteed support and durability data. Comparing it with commercial humanoids makes no sense — those are machines of a different class and purpose, described in the humanoid robots category. For teams that want to learn humanoid robotics, ToddlerBot is therefore more a model to emulate than a ready purchase. The team does not state how many copies have been built. For a student or teacher the takeaway is practical: if the goal is to learn the control and training of humanoid robots, an open design is often a better choice than an expensive, closed product.

In our catalog ToddlerBot is listed as unavailable in Poland, and the sources we checked contain no information on a Polish distributor or on deployments at domestic universities. Since the design is open, a Polish team could in theory build the robot itself by printing the parts and buying the servos; we have no confirmation, however, that anyone in Poland has done so. Interested readers are pointed to the use-case page “Universities and research”, the page “Laboratories” and the guide to learning robotics in the country, “How to Start Learning Robotics in Poland”. Until local deployments appear, it is worth following the team's publications and the project community, because that is where updates to the design and software appear.

ToddlerBot is an inspiring project for labs, universities and advanced hobbyists who want to study humanoid motion without a large budget. It is not a product for the average buyer: price, warranty and Polish support are missing. It is best treated as an open starting point for your own experiments. For a school or department it is a cheap way to see how a humanoid works from the inside. For a company seeking a finished robot it is the wrong category. The project's value lies in openness and education, not in sales, and that is how it should be judged.