This soft humanoid is designed to be ‘physically safe and socially approachable’

A startup called Fauna Robotics has revealed a new humanoid robot called Sprout it’s been developing over the past two years. Standing around 3.5-feet tall, Sprout’s design, featuring a soft padded exterior, a wide head, and expressive mechanical eyebrows, was inspired by some of science fiction’s friendlier robots like Baymax and Rosie Jetson, the startup’s co-founder and CEO, Rob Cochran, told the Associated Press.

With articulated limbs and grippers for hands, Sprout looks ready to tackle dishes, tidy up around the home, or join a factory assembly line alongside humanoid robots like Tesla’s Optimus and Boston Dynamics’ Atlas. But that’s not why Fauna Robotics developed the humanoid. It’s initially being sold to other robot developers, researchers, universities, and tinkerers who may not have the resources to develop their own humanoid platform.

Fauna Robotics says Sprout’s “movement, perception, navigation, and expression all work out of the box,” so that others can focus on developing unique applications for the humanoid instead of having to spend time teaching it to do basic things like walk. While it may be destined for labs and research facilities away from the public at first, Sprout was still developed to be approachable and function alongside humans. It’s lightweight, quiet, and was designed with “no pinch points or sharp edges” for safety reasons. It’s not folding laundry yet, but the potential is there.

While buying a Sprout may be cheaper than engineering a humanoid scratch, it’s still priced at $50,000, according to the Associated Press. That puts it well out of the reach of most consumers, but some of the startup’s earliest customers include companies like Disney and Boston Dynamics. It’s not known how much robots like Atlas cost, but it will certainly be a lot cheaper for Sprout to take damage from a bad fall than Boston Dynamics’ most advanced humanoid.