Upper-body Humanoid Robot

A robot with only a humanoid upper body — head, torso, and arms — and no legs.

An upper-body humanoid robot keeps only the human-shaped upper half: a head (usually carrying a camera), a torso, and two arms, ending in a dexterous hand or gripper. Its lower half is either a fixed base, a desk-mounted stand, or a wheeled base instead (in which case it's usually called a wheeled humanoid robot). Dropping the legs means no balance or falling to deal with, which lowers cost, improves stability, and suits long stretches of bimanual manipulation work. In embodied AI, it's a common platform for data collection and manipulation research: a person teleoperates it through tasks to gather demonstration data for training policy models like VLA. An early well-known example is Rethink Robotics' Baxter, released in 2012.

ExampleRethink Robotics' Baxter: two arms and a screen displaying a face, bolted to a fixed base while it works.

Related

Humanoid Robot · Wheeled Humanoid Robot · Dual-arm Robot · Bimanual Manipulation · Teleoperation · Rethink Robotics Baxter

Sources

Baxter (robot) - Wikipedia