Remember Westworld?
It was a science fiction TV series that ran for four seasons until it was canceled in 2022.
Set in the 2050s, it envisioned an adult amusement park hosted by biomechanical humanoid robots indistinguishable from humans.
It’s a raw, gritty, and at times repulsive show, and definitely not for a younger audience. But the science fiction is incredible, originally based on work from the 1970s by the incredible author Michael Crichton. Season one was just phenomenal.
The series explores human interactions with these lifelike humanoid robots in a theme park where there are no repercussions – after all, they aren’t human…
… and yet, they do become sentient.
I’ll leave it at that, as I don’t want to ruin the show for anyone who hasn’t seen it. I’ve been reminded of the show and these themes given the latest developments in artificial intelligence (AI). And given how incredible xAI’s Grok 3 has already proven to be, we’ll be dealing with sentient AI far sooner than we think.
But so far, the industry has been designing general-purpose humanoid robots that look like what we’d expect – mechanical. They look like machines.
What about the biomechanical, biomimetic kinds envisioned by Crichton and Westworld?
Yes, there is a company working on this – Clone Robotics. With offices in Atherton, California, and Warsaw, Poland, Clone has just announced its Clone Alpha Edition. It’s being designed to be a humanlike robotic assistant, the “world’s first bipedal, musculoskeletal android.”
It’s still in development, as you’ll see below. It can be a bit disconcerting to see the Alpha in action. Its movements aren’t so mechanical, like what we’ve seen from Optimus, Figure, or Apptronik.
Source: Clone Robotics
Alpha is essentially an anatomically accurate humanoid robot with more than 200 degrees of freedom.
Clone has also developed a muscular system using a proprietary material – Myofiber – to attach musculotendons to anatomically accurate points on Alpha’s skeletal system.
Alpha’s Muscular System | Source: Clone Robotics
As we can see below, Alpha’s skeletal system looks very human. It contains all the same 206 bones we’d find in the human body. The joints are fully articulated with ligaments and connective tissues.
Alpha even has 26 degrees of freedom in the hand, wrist, and elbow versus Figure 02 – which we’ve been writing about in recent issues such as “If I Only Had a Brain” and The Greenfield Opportunity for Humanoids – which has 16 degrees of freedom in each hand. Or even Tesla’s Optimus with 22 degrees
Alpha’s Skeletal System | Source: Clone Robotics
Alpha even has a “nervous system” with four cameras in the head, 70 inertial sensors, and 320 pressure sensors for muscle-level force feedback.
Alpha’s Nervous System | Source: Clone Robotics
All the computing-related electronics are located along the spine, and Alpha runs an NVIDIA Jetson Thor GPU for inference in the head. Clone has developed what it calls Cybernet – its visuomotor foundation model (i.e. Alpha’s brain).
And Alpha wouldn’t be complete without a vascular system.
Alpha’s Vascular System | Source: Clone Robotics
It’s a hydraulic powering system designed with a 500-watt electric pump, which is ironically the size of a human heart, that enables hydraulic pressure to the entire muscular system, allowing for far more natural movements and interactions much more akin to humans.
Source: Clone Robotics
And because the muscular system is powered by a sophisticated hydraulic system, if you stab it, it will bleed.
Clone Robotics’ work in the industry is a leap.
We could argue it’s unnecessary. After all, the kind of humanoid robots that Tesla, Figure AI, Apptronik, or Sanctuary AI are building will have all the functionality we need to be immensely useful.
Do we really need something this lifelike?
No, but it was bound to happen regardless. Each tech company will manifest AI in its own way, looking for the design that will be best received by its market.
I suspect with the latest announcement of the Clone Alpha Edition, there will be a major funding round announced soon. The company also announced that it will be taking pre-orders this year for just 279 units of the Alpha Edition.
Clone is marketing that these robots are designed for the home and will come with a pre-installed set of skills like:
Better yet, it comes with a training platform that allows its “owners” to teach Alpha new skills.
Given the current product demonstrations Clone has shown, it clearly has some work to do before Alpha is ready for production.
But knowing what we know now, with technologies like xAI’s Grok 3, and DeepMind’s software designed for robotic applications, the technology is on the cusp of making something like Alpha a reality.
And who knows? Given what’s coming, Clone Alpha could become one heck of a collector’s item.
How would you like your humanoid robot, lifelike or mechanical? You can drop a quick answer or share your thoughts right here.
Jeff
The Bleeding Edge is the only free newsletter that delivers daily insights and information from the high-tech world as well as topics and trends relevant to investments.
The Bleeding Edge is the only free newsletter that delivers daily insights and information from the high-tech world as well as topics and trends relevant to investments.
