An exhibition stand is engineered to make robots look inevitable. Your job as a buyer is to reverse that engineering for twenty minutes. This checklist collects the questions our own engineers would ask before they buy a humanoid robot from anyone - including us. It is organised in the order a stand visit naturally flows: verify the specifications, make them run it live, interrogate the software, then pin down service and paperwork while the answers can still be written into a quotation.
Ask for Numbers You Can Verify
Start with the specification sheet, and test whether its numbers mean what you think they mean. When a humanoid claims a degree-of-freedom count, ask which joints are included and whether the figure is expandable - Booster's T1, for example, is specified at 23 DoF, expandable, with the basis stated. When compute is quoted in TOPS, ask which processor delivers it and whether that compute is on the robot or in a tethered workstation. When endurance is quoted, ask the walking figure and the standing figure separately - they differ enormously, and honest suppliers publish both, as our T1 specification does with 2 hours walking and 4 hours standing. The pattern to trust is specificity offered before you ask; the pattern to distrust is a bigger number every time you probe.
Make Them Run It Live
Then leave the brochure. Ask to see the robot walk at its working pace, turn, and - the single most informative test available - fall and get up unaided. Ask to see the exact unit configuration you would receive, running the shipping software, rather than a hand-tuned demonstration build. Ask what the robot does when it fails: how it protects itself, how it reports faults, how a student or operator resets it. On stands where a working robot is present rather than a static shell, ask to see it perform its actual job - gripping, carrying, navigating - with objects the stand did not prepare. Live imperfection is data; polished video is decoration.
Turn the Checklist Into a Scoring Sheet
A practical suggestion for buying teams: convert this checklist into a one-page scoring sheet before the show, with the same questions for every stand and a column for evidence - document seen, test witnessed, answer deferred. Send two people: one to run the robot, one to run the paperwork questions, because stands are designed to keep your attention on the machine. Photograph the specification plates and certification marks of the exact models quoted. And schedule the follow-ups before you leave the hall, while the engineers who answered you are identifiable. Teams that evaluate this way rarely buy the wrong robot - and suppliers who welcome the method, as Booster does, are telling you something about the three years after the exhibition as well.
Software Is Half the Product
Hardware gets the photograph; software decides the next three years. Ask what developer tools ship with the robot, whether a reinforcement learning framework and simulation environment are included or licensed separately, and whether policies can be trained in simulation and deployed to hardware through a documented sim-to-real pipeline. Ask whose baselines you start from - competition-proven walking and recovery policies, or an empty repository. Ask how software updates are delivered and versioned, and what documentation and community exist beyond the supplier's own support desk. Our developer tools page shows the level of detail a supplier should be able to give you on the spot.
Support, Parts and Paperwork - In Writing
Finish with the unglamorous page that decides total cost. Which certifications does this exact model carry for your market today - ask for the list, as we publish for the T1 on our certifications page. What spare parts exist, how are they identified, and who stocks them in your region? What does the pre-shipping test record contain, and will you receive it? How are units packed and shipped internationally, batteries included? A supplier who answers these questions precisely, and agrees to reflect the answers in the quotation, is selling you a product. A supplier who waves them away is selling you the exhibition. Choose accordingly - and feel free to start the interrogation at our stand.
Preparing for a show, or comparing quotations now? Compare the relevant product range and deployment scenarios to take the next step.
