Kindly Robotics Orders the Asimov Humanoid DIY Kit

We're excited to announce that Kindly Robotics has secured an order for the Asimov Humanoid DIY Kit—a 1.2-meter, 35 kg, 27 degree-of-freedom open-source humanoid robot. After meeting with Nicole and Emre Can Kartel at Menlo Research, we're going all in on building a full-scale humanoid platform from scratch.

What is the Asimov DIY Kit?

Asimov is an open-source humanoid robot project with the tagline "Free the Robot." The DIY Kit—dubbed the Here Be Dragons Edition—ships as a complete set of unassembled parts: structural frame, actuators, motors, sensors, wiring harness, assembly manual, and build videos. You build it yourself.

This isn't a toy. The Asimov platform features actuator specs comparable to the Unitree G1, with each arm capable of lifting approximately 15 kg for bicep curls and 18 kg for lateral raises. It uses off-the-shelf parts and 3D-printable components, making it easy to repair, modify, and extend—exactly the kind of hackable platform we need for our research.

Why Asimov?

We've been building tools for robot design with Kindly IDE—turning natural language into validated URDF files, generating ros2_control configs, and making robot development more accessible. But we've always wanted to close the loop: go from digital design to physical hardware.

The Asimov kit is the perfect bridge. It's open-source, fully customizable, and designed for people who want to understand every bolt and wire in their robot. As an open-source project ourselves, the alignment is natural. We plan to contribute our assembly experience, integration code, and any modifications back to the Asimov community.

Meeting with Menlo Research

This partnership came together after meeting with Nicole and Emre Can Kartel at Menlo Research. Their vision for making humanoid robotics accessible resonated deeply with what we're building at Kindly. The conversation confirmed what we've believed from the start: the future of robotics is open, collaborative, and community-driven.

The Timeline

What This Means for Kindly IDE

Having a real humanoid platform in-house changes everything for our tooling. We'll be able to:

• Validate URDF exports against physical hardware, not just simulation
• Test ros2_control configs on actual actuators and sensors
• Build real skill packages through the FoodforThought platform with ground-truth data
• Create assembly tutorials that bridge the gap between digital design and physical builds
• Stress-test the IDE workflow end-to-end: prompt → design → export → deploy

Every lesson we learn during the build will feed directly back into making Kindly IDE better for everyone building robots.