RoboParty RP1: China's Open-Source Humanoid With 160 Nm Joints

RoboParty's RP1 (also called ROBOTO 01) is a bipedal humanoid with a peak joint torque of up to 160 N·m, unveiled at IROS 2026 on 28 September 2026. The company calls it the world's first high-performance full-stack open-source humanoid, which is a company claim, not an independently established one. As of 13 October 2026, RoboParty has published no price, height, weight or ship date for RP1.

What is the RoboParty RP1?

RP1 is a research-oriented bipedal humanoid aimed at researchers, educators, robotics developers and embodied-AI teams, according to the company's release. It builds on the body and workflow of RoboParty's earlier RPO robot, the Romomo actuators and a dexterous hand the company calls the RP Hand.

In plain terms: it is a platform for people who want to modify and train a humanoid, not a finished consumer product.

What is RoboParty's thesis?

RoboParty bets that humanoid robots become useful faster if the hardware, software and training tools are open. Founder Yi Huang said in the release: "We want RP1 to become an open foundation that developers can access, modify, train and continuously improve."

The company's earlier statement of the same idea, reported by Interesting Engineering, is that "the ultimate endgame of humanoid robots lies in open collaborative Embodied Infrastructure."

How is RoboParty funded?

Two reports of RoboParty's funding do not line up. A 36Kr post dated 19 May 2026, written by the investor and adviser Lighthouse Capital, describes an angel+ round of tens of millions of US dollars (no exact figure) led by Shunwei Capital with Xiaomi Strategic Investment following on.

Interesting Engineering reported in February 2026 that the company had raised $10 million from MPCi, Xiaomi and Galbot. The two reports are not reconciled, so treat the totals as unconfirmed.

The company's location is also described inconsistently: the release is datelined Pittsburgh, while the GitHub repository names Shanghai RoboParty Technology Co., Ltd., founded on 21 February 2025.

What are the RP1's specifications?

Only one hardware number is published. Everything else in the table below is not published as of 13 October 2026.

Humanoid.guide notes that peak torque is the only numerical hardware performance figure supplied. Peak torque is a short-burst maximum, so it does not describe sustained output or what the whole robot can do.

How does the RP1 work?

RoboParty describes the stack in two layers: Romomo actuator modules with a real-time motion-control system, and PartyOS on top. PartyOS is, in the company's words, its open R&D foundation for humanoid robotics.

PartyOS integrates UFO, a training framework that finds motor skills through unsupervised reinforcement learning. The company says it covers skill transitions, disturbance recovery and fall recovery without predefined motion trajectories. At the IROS booth a "Kick Me" demonstration let visitors push and kick RP1, and the company says it adjusted its posture and recovered balance. No quantified recovery benchmark has been published.

For a sense of the open tooling, the predecessor's GitHub repository lists ROS 2 Humble, Isaac Sim 4.5.0, Isaac Lab 2.1.1 and RSL-RL training, with sim-to-sim transfer to MuJoCo. Those are RPO's tools; RP1's equivalents have not been listed.

How open is it, and what came before it?

RP1 is not yet fully open. The company says it plans to progressively open motion-control systems, simulation environments, SDKs, training tools and PartyOS. It will announce more roadmap details in October 2026, with broader software and hardware releases later in Q4.

The predecessor is already public. RPO (Roboto Origin) was fully open-sourced in January 2026. Its repository says structure, electronics, training and deployment are released under GPL-3.0, with modules and third-party material keeping their own licences. It adds that the motion-control algorithms will be added gradually, and says the robot can be assembled through Taobao procurement and Jialichuang prototyping.

Reported RPO figures from Interesting Engineering: 1.25 m tall, 34 kg, built in 120 days from April to August 2025, and described by the company as a prototype to validate workflows rather than a commercial product. The release cites more than 2,500 GitHub stars for RPO and a community of more than 5,000 developers.

How does the RP1 compare with other open and low-cost humanoids?

RP1 sits between a hobbyist build and a commercial research robot, but its missing specs make a like-for-like table impossible. Here is what each source publishes.

The technology differences are mostly about actuators. Berkeley Humanoid Lite uses brushless motors with 3D-printed cycloidal gearboxes to hit a build cost under $5,000. RoboParty is instead building its own actuator line, Romomo, and aiming for higher torque. Unitree's G1 page notes that its 90 and 120 N·m figures are for the largest joint motor, not every joint, which is a useful caution when reading RP1's 160 N·m.

Where will people actually use this?

Based on the audience RoboParty names, the likely uses are:

• University labs that want a humanoid they can modify and re-train.
• Robotics courses that teach reinforcement learning on real hardware.
• Startups testing locomotion or manipulation research before building their own robot.
• Developers contributing to an open community instead of buying a closed platform.

Nothing in the release suggests home or factory deployment.

What's still unclear?

The weakest point is that most of the case rests on one number and a promise. Humanoid.guide points out that the announcement does not establish that the complete RP1 stack is available, provides no independent assessment, and treats "world's first" as a company claim.

Open questions:

• Which joint delivers 160 N·m, and what is the continuous rating?
• What are RP1's height, weight, degrees of freedom, battery and compute?
• What will RP1 cost, and when does the mass-production program ship?
• Which RP1 files will be open, and under which licence?
• Which funding total is correct, and where is the company based?

Should you wait for more details?

If you want to build on an open humanoid today, RPO is the one with public files, and the price and spec sheet of RP1 are still to come. If you need a robot you can order now, RP1 does not yet qualify: there is no price, ordering page or ship date. Watch for the October 2026 roadmap announcement, which the company says will detail what opens and when.