Hardwarerobopartyrp1humanoid-robotopen-hardwareroboticsunitree
RoboParty's RP1 humanoid robot publishes its CAD, 14 circuit boards and wiring under an open hardware license, minus the joint-motor firmware
Shanghai's RoboParty put the mechanical design, PCB production files, harnesses and bill of materials for its 1.35-meter RP1 humanoid on GitHub, with no price or ship date yet.
Most humanoid robots you can buy are sealed boxes with an SDK on top. RoboParty, a Shanghai company, went the other way. The RP1_hardware repository describes itself as “Hardware design and manufacturing files for the RoboParty RP1 humanoid robot: mechanical parts, PCB production data, wiring harnesses and bills of materials,” with SolidWorks source files and a license line that reads “RoboParty-owned hardware designs are licensed under CERN-OHL-W-2.0.”
CNX Software went through the repositories and counted “manufacturing files for 14 custom circuit boards.” The software side sits in the main RP1 repository under GPL-3.0, and its pitch is blunt: “No black boxes, nothing withheld — full control handed back to the developer.” It says the stack supports “24, 28, 30 and 42 DoF variants.”
The robot itself, per RoboParty’s spec page, weighs about 39 kg (about 41 kg for the Pro) with its hands and battery, runs up to 4 m/s, carries 3 kg, climbs 30-degree slopes and 50 mm steps, and gets about three hours from a 10 Ah pack. The battery swaps hot, without shutting the robot down. CNX explains how: a 48V main battery plus a 30V auxiliary one “for maintaining critical control power during battery replacement.” The base model runs on a Rockchip RK3588; the Pro adds an Allwinner A733 and an Nvidia Orin NX 16 GB.
| RoboParty RP1 | RoboParty RP1 Pro | Unitree R1 | Unitree G1 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | not announced | not announced | from $4,900 (R1 AIR), $5,900 (R1) | $13.5K |
| Height | 1.35 m | 1.35 m | 1.23 m | 1.32 m |
| Weight | about 39 kg | about 41 kg | about 27 / 29 kg | about 35 kg |
| Degrees of freedom | 24 | 30 | 20 / 26 | 23 (EDU 23 to 43) |
| Battery life | about 3 h, hot-swap | about 3 h, hot-swap | about 1 h | about 2 h, quick release |
| Peak joint torque | 160 N·m | 160 N·m | not listed | 90 N·m knee (EDU 120) |
| Hardware design files | public, CERN-OHL-W-2.0 | public, CERN-OHL-W-2.0 | not published | not published |
Unitree numbers are from the R1 page and the G1 page. CNX names the R1 as the RP1’s closest comparison.
RoboParty didn’t say what it costs. The pre-order page is a contact form, and CNX notes that “RoboParty does not confirm pricing or a shipping schedule.” It also flagged that one bundled dataset, UFO, carries a CC BY-NC 4.0 license, which rules out commercial use of that piece.
Prediction, medium confidence: RoboParty is betting that open files sell more robots than they give away, the way open 3D printer designs turned into a business for the companies that published them. Prediction, low confidence: the price lands below Unitree’s R1. A 39 kg robot with 160 N·m joints isn’t cheap to build, even when the drawings are free.
The open question is the motors. If RoboParty publishes the ROMOMO firmware, RP1 becomes the most complete open humanoid anyone can build from files. If it doesn’t, every RP1 still depends on one company for the part that actually moves.