The technological leap of robotics is reaching fever pitch as more companies enter the arena. Clone Alpha isn’t just another human-like bot built with bolts, servos and screws, it is a groundbreaking AI robot that can seamlessly replicate biological functions of humans from the flexibility in our fingers to the distinct gait of a human walking on uneven terrain.
https://www.clonerobotics.com/android
The complex ways in which our muscles contract utilising tendons and joints interacting took millions of years for evolution to perfect, and now we have the same power to replicate that in AI.
Clone robotics is working on a project that could change how we view robots and close the gap between humans and machines.
These robots have a synthetic organ system capable of mimicking the biological systems and processes of plants and animals.
Vascular System
The Clone’s vascular system is the most sophisticated hydraulic powering system ever designed, with a 500 watt electric pump as compact as the human heart able to pump liquid at a 40 SLPM volumetric flow rate and 100 psi rating, allowing it to supply hydraulic pressure to the entire muscular system. Clone’s Aquajet valve technology combines a 100 psi water pressure with a 2.28 SLPM flow rate, under a watt of power consumption, and a three-way configuration in a miniaturized 12mm design.
The robot learns by observation from living organisms to become better at its tasks, for Clone Alpha, that means replicating human movement with startling fluidity that’s uncharacteristic of other humanoid robots, including some of the more advanced humanoid robots making waves in the industry, like Tesla’s Optimus bot.
Unlike the Clone Alpha, the Tesla bot still relies on traditional electric motors, which, while impressive in their imitation of human movement, are still quite clunky and distinctly robot-like. On the other hand, the Clone Alpha is powered by synthetic muscles that mimic human anatomy to a startling degree, with biomimetic systems that allow for more lifelike and fluid movements.
Clone Robotics responded to Elon, claiming that Clone has a better and cheaper humanoid hand than Optimus. https://t.co/XTLSmCQy4t pic.twitter.com/m4Ie6oAw8E
— The Humanoid Hub (@TheHumanoidHub) February 5, 2025
As a result, if you were to give the Clone Alpha and Tesla bot the same task, the former would be able to complete these tasks with more precision, fluidity and dexterity.
Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the Clone Alpha features an impressive 164 points of articulation in its upper body alone, a clear testament to its advanced design.
Beyond having remarkably flexible joints, the Clone Alpha utilises myofiber technology that mimics the structure and function of human muscles. Instead of rigid actuators and motors, they use soft, water powered, artificial muscles. The myofibers contract and relax in a similar fashion to human muscles, which adds greater fluidity and precision to their movements.
Protoclone by Clone Robotics: Bipedal Musculoskeletal Android V1
“A faceless, anatomically accurate synthetic human with over 200 degrees of freedom, over 1,000 Myofibers muscles, and 500 sensors.” pic.twitter.com/gjVHgZ36MF
— The Humanoid Hub (@TheHumanoidHub) February 19, 2025
Myofiber muscles make movement look more natural, also, despite these synthetic muscles being incredibly lightweight, they’re surprisingly powerful with a mere 3 grams of muscle being able to lift 2.2 pounds of load. By being able to contract to 30% its initial length in a millisecond, the Clone Alpha is able to achieve high levels of performance while minimising energy consumption.
Besides the added power, Clone Alpha, utilising myofiber technology, means that it is more easily adaptable to any task. The Clone Alpha uses a hydraulic pump similar to a human heart that circulates fluid through the robot’s Aquajet vascular system. This pump operates at 500 watts, providing the necessary power to drive the myofibers and enable Clone Alpha’s dynamic movements.
Muscular System
The Clone’s muscular system animates the skeleton thanks to Clone’s revolutionary artificial muscle technology Myofiber pioneered by Clone in 2021, which actuates natural animal skeletons by attaching each musculotendon unit to the anatomically accurate points on the bones. Myofibers are produced in monolithic musculotendon units to eliminate tendon failures. In order to obtain the desirable qualities of mammalian skeletal muscle, a suitable synthetic muscle fiber should respond in less than 50 ms with a bigger than 30% unloaded contraction and at least a kilogram of contraction force for a single, three gram muscle fiber. Today, Myofiber is the only artificial muscle in the world capable of achieving such a combination of weight, power density, speed, force-to-weight, and energy efficiency.
The internal arterial system also incorporates valve technology in its hydraulic system, which controls the complex network of valves within the robot and ensures precise control of the hydraulic fluid.
But how exactly does Clone’s choice of hydraulics for their robot’s vascular system make it the better choice when compared to the traditional pneumatic models?
Well, to start off with, pneumatics require a large, clunky and loud compressor.
Clone Robotics initially used a 12 kilogram compressor in one of their earlier models with eight muscles and a power of 1.2 kilowatts, it threw a thermal fuse and stopped working after just one hour of work.
https://t.co/MSm6y2Xrxy pic.twitter.com/rzPkZhgV1J
— Clone (@clonerobotics) February 5, 2025
On the other hand, their much smaller three kilogram water pump consumes only 200 watts and can easily power 40 muscles, 24/7.
As a result, the hydraulic pumps are far more efficient, and because water is incompressible, it also produces far smoother motions without muscle vibrations that make pneumatic bots clunkier and louder.
Nervous System
The Clone’s nervous system was designed for instantaneous neural control of the valves, and thereby the muscles, with only proprioceptive and visual feedback. The Clone is equipped with 4 depth cameras in the skull for vision, 70 inertial sensors that provide joint-level proprioception (angles and velocities) and 320 pressure sensors for muscle-level force feedback. The control boards for the valves and sensor fusion feedback are mounted along the vertebrae with lightning fast microcontrollers sending and receiving information to and from the NVIDIA Jetson Thor inference GPU in the skull running Cybernet, Clone’s visuomotor foundation model.
Clone Alpha’s nervous system is just as impressive as its vascular system, with 70 inertial sensors and 320 pressure sensors for real time feedback, this humanoid bot can respond instantly to any stimuli.
These systems also communicate with a state of the art NVIDIA Jetson AGX Thor GPU, which runs on Clone Robotics’ latest Cybernet model. This advanced chip that acts similar to the human brain allows the robot to process visual feedback and exercise accurate proprioceptive abilities, which means it can tell exactly where its limbs are in space.
Naturally, these features contribute to the AI’s advanced fluid and human like movements.
In combination with cutting edge biometric principles, the Clone Alpha is undoubtedly setting a new benchmark for humanoid robots in terms of strength, natural movement, and dexterity.
Clone’s eerie Torso 2 sets a new standard for androids with a fully actuated lumbar spine and 910 muscle fibers under its ‘skin’ for silent, lifelike movement. And yes, legs are on the way. pic.twitter.com/iQuzOOnmFn
— TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) December 31, 2024
It truly offers us a glimpse into a future where robots can effortlessly mimic biological beings and redefines what they can achieve. Looking at a microscopic view of Clone Alpha’s nervous system shows how it is truly the perfect example of engineering, meeting biology.
The team at Clone Alpha have also created custom bones, valves, muscles, and sensors from scratch so that the bot simulates biological movement for example, when you want to move your hand, your brain sends signals to your muscles, which cause the fibres to contract and relax, creating flexible and fluid movement.
This complex organic system is difficult to recreate in robots without muscles or nearly enough joints, which is what makes Clone Robotics’ approach so special.
The team recreated human like movement by swapping muscles for fluid filled cylinders, so whenever the robot receives the signal to move, pressurised fluid within these cylinders forces the pistons to extend or retract, creating a seamless motion that mimics a human hand, combining these hydraulic systems with sensors also allows it to gauge how much pressure it exerts enabling it to perform complex and delicate movements like humans.
At the same time, hydraulic muscles can also exert high levels of force consistently, giving them an edge when lifting heavy loads compared to a human hand. They also aren’t subject to the biological constraints that cause fatigue in our hands with the build up of lactic acid.
Prior to muscle-like actuators, you could only create human-like robotic movements through classical control with a human wearing a glove that allowed the robot to mimic such movement, but Clone Robotics’ artificial muscles are fully autonomous, which has potential use cases in creating better human prosthetics with unmatched levels of mobility and dexterity.
Skeletal System
The Clone’s skeletal system contains all 206 bones of the human body, with a small number of bone fusions. The joints are fully articulated with artificial ligaments and connective tissues. With 1:1 ligament and tendon placement on the skeleton, the android is highly articular and includes one-to-many and many-to-one joint-muscle relationships. The four joints in the shoulder that connect the shoulder blade, collarbone, and upper arm bone have a total of 20 degrees of freedom, both rotational and translational, with an additional 6 degrees of freedom for each vertebra in the spine. With 26 degrees of freedom in the hand, wrist, and elbow, just the upper torso of the Clone without the legs possesses 164 degrees of freedom. These artificial human skeletons are made entirely of cheap and durable polymers.
On a smaller scale, Clone Robotics first plans to deploy their impressive humanoid Alphabots in the home.
Clone Alpha will come preloaded with skills for basic movements like walking, grasping objects, and object recognition, allowing it to identify and interact with common household items.
As a home assistant, the Clone Alpha can distinguish between your bag and a jacket when you tell it to fetch it for you. Thanks to its advanced neurological training, this AI bot is also capable of learning new skills from its owner, making it easily customisable for industries with complex procedures, including the medical field, where Clone Alpha can help with invasive surgeries, thanks to its precision, or on a manufacturing assembly line where they can handle delicate objects and perform intricate tasks. A fully functional Clone Alpha that could work side by side with humans on a manufacturing assembly line or assist healthcare workers as well as taking care of the elderly would drastically increase productivity in those sectors.
The company’s goal is to make low cost muscular skeletal androids with human level hands trained to perform all the common labour tasks needed for daily life.
We will have to adapt to a world where these humanoid robots are a regular part of our lives.
Right now, Clone Robotics is planning to scale up its manufacturing and enter commercial markets as soon as it creates a compact energy supply.
For now, the focus is on delivering their first 279 units, which will act as prototypes, giving crucial feedback to the company before they scale up to mass production and start producing thousands of units.
