instead of forcing human motion onto a robot body, they changed the robot body.
“[3 Sep 2026] BRIDGE: An Open-Source Humanoid Platform via Morphology-Control Co-Design for Physical AI”
BRIDGE is an 88 cm humanoid whose joint layout, body proportions, actuators, and controller were designed together around one goal: reproduce human motion well.
the team tests candidate body designs by retargeting large amounts of human motion onto them, then asks a second question: can the physical robot actually execute those motions under closed-loop control?
that process produced a 21-DoF humanoid with a paper-listed hardware cost of ~$1,500, released with its control policy and open hardware design.
the real robot walks, recovers from pushes, and performs highly dynamic motions including a backflip.
human video is becoming valuable robot training data.
BRIDGE asks whether the hardware itself should be designed to make that transfer easier.
sites.google.com/view/bridge…