3.5-Foot Robot Named Sprout Built to Work Safely at Home

For the first time, a humanoid robot has been designed specifically to live and work alongside humans in everyday spaces. Fauna Robotics, a New York startup, built Sprout from scratch to be a helpful presence in homes, classrooms, and offices rather than adapting industrial machines for human environments.

Standing just 3.5 feet tall and weighing 50 pounds, Sprout fits naturally into spaces designed for people. Its small size and lightweight build mean it carries less force during movement, making accidental contact far less dangerous than with larger industrial robots.

Safety shaped every design choice. Sprout features soft-touch materials, rounded edges, and quiet motors that help it feel approachable rather than intimidating. It can walk, kneel, crawl, and even recover from falls without breaking, making it resilient enough for unpredictable real-world conditions.

The robot uses simple one-finger grippers instead of complex hands, which keeps it lighter and more durable while still handling practical tasks. It can fetch objects, hand things to people, and interact in shared spaces without needing safety barriers or fixed paths.

Sprout's expressive face helps people understand what it's doing through simple visual cues. You don't need technical training to read its intentions, which helps build trust during everyday interactions.

The robot navigates indoor spaces using onboard sensors and NVIDIA computing power. Several hours of battery life make it practical for extended use in real-world settings where charging breaks aren't always convenient.

Fauna built Sprout as a platform for developers, enterprises, and researchers rather than a finished consumer product. The modular software system allows users to add new capabilities through updates instead of replacing hardware, keeping costs down as technology improves.

The Ripple Effect

Service industries now employ the majority of workers globally, yet labor shortages continue growing in healthcare, education, hospitality, and eldercare. Sprout represents a new approach to addressing these gaps by creating robots that can safely support human workers in the spaces where help is needed most.

Unlike industrial robots confined behind cages, Sprout moves toward a future where humanoid helpers operate seamlessly in our daily environments. This shift could transform how we think about robotics, moving them from factory floors into classrooms, care facilities, and homes where they can extend human capability rather than replace it.

The 29-degree articulation system gives Sprout smooth, natural movement that feels less mechanical and more relatable. This attention to human-like motion helps people feel comfortable rather than unsettled when the robot enters their space.

Fauna kept the technology simple where it matters. Head-mounted sensors handle perception and navigation without the complexity of wrist cameras, reducing maintenance while preserving functionality.

The first generation of truly people-friendly robots is stepping out of the lab and into everyday life.