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The big picture: In the center of Fauna Robotics’ Manhattan workspace, a humanoid around the height of a preschooler walks by, its head tilting slightly, its "eyebrows" moving like gentle windshield wipers. The robot, called Sprout, is unmistakably alive in its motions, but utterly unlike the gleaming humanoids that dominate many factory floors. Wrapped in sage-green foam and standing a modest 3.5 feet tall, Sprout trades raw industrial strength for approachability.

Founded in stealth in New York’s Flatiron District, Fauna Robotics spent two years building Sprout as a different kind of platform – one that treats robots not as laborers but as companions and collaborators. Its debut this week marks the company’s attempt to define a new category of "approachable" humanoids: soft, expressive, and designed to live comfortably among people rather than machines.

"Most people in this industry take inspiration from the science fiction that we grew up with," co-founder and CEO Rob Cochran told The Associated Press. "I think some do so from Westworld and Terminator. We do from WALL-E and Baymax and Rosie Jetson."

Sprout walks autonomously through offices using simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), re-routing to avoid obstacles, and is stable enough to handle unexpected bumps or slips. During demonstrations this month, it used onboard cameras and sensor fusion to navigate a cluttered workspace, recover from a misstep, and resume walking without intervention.

The robot isn’t made to lift a car door or stack warehouse boxes. Instead, it grips toy blocks, picks up stuffed animals, executes choreographed dances like the Twist or the Floss, and even hoists itself upright from a seated position with small but measurable steps executed with mechanical grace.

Behind its cartoonish gestures is serious hardware and research lineage. Fauna’s chief technology officer, Josh Merel, previously worked at Google’s DeepMind, where he co-authored a study in Nature describing a simulated AI-driven rat designed to model motor control through reinforcement learning.

That same philosophy – training systems in physics-based virtual environments before deploying them into real bodies – guides much of Sprout’s development. Merel and Cochran had also collaborated at the neurotechnology startup CTRL-labs, later acquired by Facebook. Their reunion at Fauna channels that experience into giving robots an intuitive sense of movement and space.

The robot’s first customers include Boston Dynamics and Disney, both known for blending engineering and performance. Marc Theermann, chief strategy officer at Boston Dynamics, said the company began testing Sprout early. "You take it out of the box and you can start walking it around immediately," he said. "Seeing their robot for the first time really lets you see the future a little bit. And if you squint, you can imagine something like that being welcome in people’s homes."

For now, those homes would have to belong to well-funded technologists or research labs: Sprout costs about $50,000. That price tag, Cochran argues, makes it less a consumer gadget and more a developer kit for the next generation of roboticists.

The company describes its product less as a finished machine than as a flexible software platform for AI developers, startups, and universities – an echo of how the early personal computer industry thrived on experimentation. "There’s a value in putting these platforms directly in the hands of developers," Cochran said. "That’s how ecosystems start."

Compared with competitors like China’s Unitree, which already sells its humanoids to labs worldwide, Fauna says that it is an American company manufacturing and shipping within the US – a point that may matter to researchers avoiding Chinese hardware due to tariffs or security concerns.

The team’s design philosophy is to convey safety and playfulness through Sprout’s gently curved body and muted matte finish. "Let’s build a system that human beings actually want to be around," Fauna’s vice president of hardware, Anthony Moschella – formerly of Peloton, said, explaining that most prototype humanoids look built for factories, not living rooms.

That sensibility grew from a broader frustration with robotics’ long-standing "industrial machismo," as Cochran calls it: machines engineered for power over presence. Advances in AI, motors, and compact batteries have only recently made it viable to build expressive robots small and safe enough for social settings. "They were generally quite big and physically dangerous to be around," Cochran said. "Strong, heavy. If they fell on you, it’d be a real problem."

Still, the field’s history is cautionary. Dozens of companies once tried to bring personal robots into homes, from Anki’s Cozmo to Jibo, only to collapse under consumer indifference or hardware costs.

Even iRobot – maker of the long-successful Roomba – filed for bankruptcy protection after decades of dominance. Fauna knows the odds are steep. But Cochran insists timing is different now: the convergence of AI learning, lightweight materials, and falling component prices makes soft robotics both more capable and less fragile than it was even five years ago.

Inside Fauna’s test lab, those improvements are tangible. When a researcher stepped into Sprout’s path mid-walk, the robot stopped, plotted a detour, and continued around without contact. Onlookers clapped when it rebounded from a near-trip caused by the low wheel of an office table – behavior that made it appear almost self-conscious.

"It’s cute, and it’s not too humanoid," said Ana Pervan, a research scientist who worked on Sprout’s mapping and navigation systems. "That actually makes it more fun. It’s your buddy, your pal – that’s a different thing than trying to be human."

Image credit: The Associated Press