Hi HN, I&#x27;m Ben, from K-Scale Labs (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kscale.dev">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kscale.dev</a>). We&#x27;re building open-source humanoid robots.Hardware video: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=qhZi9rtdEKg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=qhZi9rtdEKg</a>Software video: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=hXi3b3xXJFw" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=hXi3b3xXJFw</a>Docs: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.kscale.dev">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.kscale.dev</a>Github: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;kscalelabs">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;kscalelabs</a>HN thread from back in May: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=44023680">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=44023680</a>I started K-Scale because I really wanted a humanoid robot to hack on, so I knew that if I built one, I would have at least one customer. It was before the Unitree G1 came out so the cheapest option at the time costed over $50k, but I figured I could build one for about $10k using COTS (Commercial Off-the-Shelf) components, which would be a much better price point for indie hackers and developers.We built the first version using some 3D printers and parts that I bought off of Amazon and Alibaba. It was not great, but it let us build out the full pipeline, from designing and building the hardware to training control policies in simulation. We actually did most of this in about two months, and had a standing, waving robot by YC Demo Day (although it wasn&#x27;t good for much else!).Since then, our focus has been on figuring out how to go from a hobby-grade robot to a consumer-grade robot, without inflating our BOM (Bill of Materials, i.e. cost of all the parts) or having to set up our own factories. This is surprisingly difficult. A lot of the supply chain for robotics components currently goes through China, but tariffs have made it difficult to rely on Chinese suppliers for components. Also, even a $10k price point is pretty expensive for most customers, for a humanoid robot that has fairly limited capabilities.Our solution to this is to open-source our hardware and software. This makes it easier for us to navigate tariffs and manufacturing challenges. By making our reference design public, our suppliers have a much easier time figuring out how to offer us competitive solutions, and our manufacturing partners are able to more easily adjust our design for their production processes.On the demand side, the basic problem with humanoid robots is that they&#x27;re mostly useless right now, and it will probably be a long and fairly capital-intensive journey to make them useful. My expectation was that there is a large pool of latent interest from people like me who are interested in hacking on humanoids, and that this customer segment is a much better customer segment to sell into than more traditional business-focused robotics applications. As someone in this customer segment myself, I felt that open-source software and hardware would be a strong value proposition, particularly for developers exploring bringing humanoids into their own business verticals.More philosophically, I think it is important that there is a good, open-source humanoid robot. I think the technology is likely to mature much more rapidly than many people currently expect, and the idea of armies of humanoids owned by some single company walking around is pretty dystopian.Right now, we&#x27;re selling our base humanoid robot, K-Bot, for $8999. The main reason we&#x27;re selling it now, instead of waiting to do more R&amp;D, is because we&#x27;re trying to negotiate volume prices with our own suppliers before we do final DfM (Design for Manufacturing). For example, we are able to negotiate better volume pricing for actuators and end effectors than what the average indie developer would be able to get for low-volume orders.However, a lot of the people who want to buy a humanoid robot today do so because they want a completely autonomous robot to do all their chores, which is a pretty hard (although exciting) thing to build. To square this circle, we&#x27;re offering a &quot;Full Autonomy&quot; option - it is the same robot hardware, but we will provide free hardware and software upgrades until we are able to make the robot fully autonomous. This way, we can have some extra cash upfront to kickstart development, and start to build a core group of people who are aligned with helping us improve the robot&#x27;s capabilities across a diverse set of environments. From our customers&#x27; perspective, it&#x27;s a way to de-risk buying a first-generation product from a young hardware company, and to have a bigger influence on how the technology unfolds.The best part about building open source software and hardware is getting torn apart by people smarter than us, so we&#x27;d love your feedback!

Launch HN: K-Scale Labs (YC W24) – Open-Source Humanoid Robots

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I&#x27;m a software developer with 20+ years of experience but during this time I never programmed any games, but I really wanted to for the longest time. With the advent of AI coding agents I thought that this is the best time to try and so I&#x27;ve learned a bit of Phaser.js (a Javascript based game engine) and entered Beginner&#x27;s Jam Summer 2025 - a game jam for beginners in the game dev industry that allows AI coding. After around 25-30 hours (working mainly after my full-time day job) I managed to submit the game I called &quot;Tower of Time&quot; (the theme of the jam was &quot;Time Travel&quot;).You can play it in your browser here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m4v3k.itch.io&#x2F;tower-of-time" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m4v3k.itch.io&#x2F;tower-of-time</a>The goal of this project for me was first and foremost to see if AI coding is good enough to help me with creating something that&#x27;s actually fun to play and to my delight is turns out the answer is yes! I decided to document the whole process for myself and others to learn from my mistakes, so both the code AND all the prompts I used are published on GitHub (see submission link). The art assets are largely taken from itch.io artists who shared them for free, with some slight touch ups. Sounds came from freesound.org.I&#x27;ve also streamed parts of the process, you can watch me working on the final stretch and submitting the finished game (warning, it&#x27;s 5+ hours long):<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.twitch.tv&#x2F;videos&#x2F;2503428478" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.twitch.tv&#x2F;videos&#x2F;2503428478</a>During this process I&#x27;ve learned a lot and I want to use this knowledge in my next project that will hopefully be more ambitious. If you have any comments or questions I&#x27;m here to answer!

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