Fauna Robotics publicly debuted Sprout on Tuesday in New York City, a 3.5-foot (1-meter) tall humanoid robot clad in sage-green foam padding and designed to feel approachable rather than intimidating. The robot, which nods its rectangular head, lifts windshield-wiper-like “eyebrows” and extends gripper hands to shake, is the result of two years of secret research by the Manhattan-based stealth startup.
Co-founder and CEO Rob Cochran said the design philosophy deliberately rejected what he called “industrial automotive machismo” — the bulky, intimidating aesthetic of many humanoid prototypes. “Most people in this industry take inspiration from the science fiction that we grew up with,” Cochran said. “I think some do so from ‘Westworld’ and ‘Terminator.’ We do from WALL-E and Baymax and Rosie Jetson.”
The robot is built for intimate human spaces, not assembly lines. Cochran said many humanoids are “generally quite big and physically dangerous to be around. Strong, heavy. If they fell on you, it’d be a real problem.”
Fauna is selling Sprout as a developer platform at $50,000 per unit, a model the company compares to early personal computers and smartphones that sparked ecosystems of third-party applications. Cochran described Fauna as “the first American company to be actively shipping robots as a developer platform” and said the company has been hand-delivering the first models. Early customers include Disney and Boston Dynamics.
Marc Theermann, chief strategy officer at Boston Dynamics, said in a recent interview, “You take it out of the box and you can start walking it around immediately. Seeing their robot for the first time really lets you see the future a little bit. And if you squint, you can see how a robot like that would be welcomed into people’s homes.”
Cochran co-founded Fauna with Josh Merel, the company’s chief technology officer, after both previously worked together at CTRL-labs, a neurotech startup sold to Facebook in 2019. Merel, an expert in robot locomotion, previously worked at Google’s DeepMind, where he published research in the journal Nature on an AI-powered virtual rat. Cochran said he spent “a misguided four years at Goldman Sachs” before reuniting with Merel.
Sprout cannot lift heavy objects, but Fauna employees demonstrated in mid-January that it can dance the Twist or the Floss, grab a toy block or teddy bear, and hoist itself from a chair to walk across the wood floors of the company’s headquarters in New York’s Flatiron District. Operators can pilot the robot using a video game controller, a phone application or a virtual-reality headset. Sprout also knows its office layout well enough to be sent on a planned mission, such as to inventory the break room refrigerator.
Ana Pervan, a Fauna research scientist who works on mapping and navigation, said of the robot, “It’s cute, and it’s not too humanoid, and I think that actually makes it a lot more fun. It’s not verging on creepy or trying to be too human. It’s like your buddy, your pal, that’s a different thing than you.”
Sprout walks slowly but steadily on uneven ground. During a demonstration, it came close to tripping while taking a sharp turn to avoid a person, hitting its foot on a protruding table wheel too low for its camera eyes to detect. The robot quickly recovered its balance and continued walking.
The company’s vice president of hardware, Anthony Moschella, formerly helped design Peloton’s exercise bikes and rowers. “Let’s build a system that human beings actually want to be around,” Moschella said. “I think it’s incredible that so many robotics companies are not versed in the cultural context of what it means to be around a robot.”
Cochran acknowledged the long history of failed personal-robot attempts — including Anki, Jibo and the recent bankruptcy of Roomba-maker iRobot — but argued that advances in AI, motors and batteries had changed the equation. “There were a lot of really brilliant attempts. I think the technology wasn’t quite there,” Cochran said. “I do think we’re right on the precipice now where you could build a companion that is present, engaging, delightful to be around, and can also move around a space in a way that nothing ever has before.”
In a home video Cochran keeps on his phone, his 2-year-old twins jump up and down excitedly as Sprout greets them. Moschella said what happens next with Sprout will depend on how developers explore its capabilities and what they learn.