Menlo Research’s Asimov humanoid kit uses MJF printing to hit $15,000 price point

Singapore-based Menlo Research has launched the Asimov humanoid robot kit, a 1.2-meter, 35-kilogram bipedal platform that ships unassembled for $15,000. The majority of its structural components are designed for production via HP Multi Jet Fusion (MJF) 3D printing, a deliberate choice to avoid CNC tooling costs and enable open-source part replacement. The kit offers more than 25 degrees of freedom, uses a parallel Revolute-Spherical-Universal ankle mechanism for two-axis motion, and runs a Processor-in-the-Loop simulation framework that injects real-world signal degradation into training. Menlo publishes the full bill of materials on GitHub, allowing independent builders to source components and print replacement parts themselves.

This launch fits the recurring pattern of AM enabling hardware startups to bypass traditional capital-intensive manufacturing. Where earlier humanoid robotics projects required millions in tooling and injection molding, Menlo uses MJF — a polymer powder-bed fusion process — to produce strong, lightweight structural parts at a fraction of the upfront cost. The $15,000 price point undercuts most research-grade humanoid platforms by an order of magnitude, though it remains a hobbyist-to-researcher investment rather than a consumer product. The open-source approach mirrors the desktop 3D printing community’s ethos, but applied to a much more complex electromechanical system. The key editorial question is whether MJF parts can sustain the cyclic loading and impact stresses of a walking robot over hundreds of hours of operation — something the article does not address.

For Menlo Research, the immediate execution challenge is validating long-term durability of MJF-printed structural components under real bipedal loads. Independent developers should treat the kit as a prototyping platform rather than a production-ready robot, and plan to iterate on actuator tuning and material selection. The project is a useful test case for polymer AM in functional robotics, but it does not yet prove production readiness at scale.