Bambot Low-Cost Humanoid

Bambot — $300 Open-Source Humanoid

Bambot is the cheapest credible dual-arm humanoid in the DIY catalog: ~$300 in parts, two SO-ARM-derived arms mounted on a torso, sitting atop a two-wheeled self-balancing drive base. Built by Tim Qian and documented at bambot.org, with an interactive 3D URDF viewer you can drive from a browser before building anything.

What you're getting

• Two arms — SO-ARM101 derivative with the v2 bases, matched follower and leader arms for teleop
• Humanoid torso — prints as a small number of large parts (Bambot_Body, Bambot_v0_base)
• Two-wheel self-balancing base — balance-bot style, dramatic and compact
• STS3215 / Feetech bus — same ecosystem as SO-ARM101 so servos are interchangeable
• Web-based viewer — bambot.org renders the exact URDF directly in the browser, with URDFs for Unitree G1, Unitree Go2, and SO-ARM for comparison

Why it's interesting

The price/complexity curve on humanoids is steep. Bambot deliberately pushes the low-end corner of that plot — it isn't going to out-dance a Unitree H1, but it's a humanoid you can actually order and build this weekend. That makes it one of the best entry points for students, makers, and researchers who want to touch the full humanoid control stack (balance + arm IK + teleop + learning) without a five-figure robot.

What you can do with it

• Balance + drive demos — segway-style base gives you a dramatic "robot standing up and moving" on a budget
• Teleop — two follower arms paired with two leader arms = the cheapest bilateral humanoid teleop rig
• Imitation learning — standard LeRobot pipeline; dataset the arms+base+body+head all together
• Browser-native demos — the bambot.org URDF viewer means you can show off the robot's kinematics to someone who doesn't have the hardware yet

Printed parts (this program)

Base:

• Bambot_v0_base — main base plate with motor cutouts
• Bambot_Body — humanoid torso shell
• BambotWheel — printed wheel (pair with foam tire or TPU over-mold)
• Base_Motor — drive motor bracket

SO-ARM101 arms (per arm):

• base_so101_v2 — arm base
• upper_arm_so101_v1, under_arm_so101_v1 — links
• rotation_pitch_so101_v1 — shoulder
• wrist_roll_pitch_so101_v2, wrist_roll_follower_so101_v1 — wrist
• moving_jaw_so101_v1 — gripper jaw
• motor_holder_so101_base_v1 — servo mount

The full repo has ~46 STLs across the Bambot torso, arms, and base, plus reference URDFs for Unitree G1/Go2 you can compare against in the viewer.

Attribution & license

• Designer: Tim Qian (timqian)
• Upstream: https://github.com/timqian/bambot
• Web viewer: https://bambot.org
• License: Apache 2.0
• Built on: SO-ARM101

Links

• Upstream repo: https://github.com/timqian/bambot
• Interactive viewer: https://bambot.org
• Demo thread: https://x.com/Tim_Qian/status/1901952877243122014
• Discord: https://discord.gg/Fq2gvSMyRJ

Build Guide

Hardware build documentation and assembly files: github.com/timqian/bambot/tree/main/hardware