Just when we thought the humanoid robot shindig couldn’t get any more packed, another plucky contender has swaggered through the door. Humanoid AI, a UK-based startup, has officially taken the wraps off its bipedal HMND 01 Alpha, marking its grand entrance into the two-legged tech sprint. This follows the company’s previous showcase of a wheeled version, demonstrating a rather clever dual-platform strategy for tackling the industrial automation market. What’s more, the company audaciously claims it whipped up this robot in just seven months – a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it turnaround in a field where development cycles usually stretch longer than a particularly dull awards ceremony.
According to the initial specifications, the HMND 01 Alpha stands a respectable 5ft 10.5in (1.79 metres) tall and boasts 29 degrees of freedom, not even counting its mitts. It’s clearly built with utility in mind, offering a 15kg dual-handed payload capacity and the choice of either 12-DOF dexterous hands or more straightforward grippers. The whole shebang is powered by a VLA-based autonomous frame—that’s Vision-Language-Action for those not yet fluent in AI-speak—and promises a stated operating time of three hours. Humanoid AI is squarely aiming at logistics, warehouses, and retail facilities, where the robot can tackle the soul-crushing monotony of repetitive tasks like picking, sorting, and machine feeding.
Why This One Might Just Be Worth a Squint
In a field now bristling with high-profile heavyweights like Tesla’s Optimus, Figure AI’s 02, and Boston Dynamics’ Atlas, any new entrant needs to rock up with a truly compelling unique selling proposition. Humanoid AI’s rather pragmatic approach—offering both wheeled and bipedal platforms—could well be its ace in the hole, allowing customers to pick the perfect mobility solution for their specific environment. While its 15kg payload capacity is certainly competitive, the three-hour runtime does put it on the lower end compared to the 4-8 hours offered by rivals such as Apptronik’s Apollo and Figure 02. Still, with a claimed record-breaking development speed and a laser focus on the slightly less glamorous, but utterly vital, logistics sector, this British-built bot is definitely one to watch. The humanoid race, it seems, isn’t just about who can pull off the flashiest demo anymore; it’s about who can ship a working, profitable machine first.
