Free Humanoid Corpus — Schema v0.2

Status

v0.2 is the first version that treats the corpus as the prior art commons itself rather than as substrate for a separate commons. Changes from v0.1:

Quality bar for entries made explicit and load-bearing
Timestamping infrastructure required (not optional)
disclosed_subsystems field added with structured taxonomy
cpc_classifications field added for examiner discoverability
draft flag added so incremental progress is visible without polluting the commons-quality entry pool

Existing seed entries from v0.1 carry schema_version: 1 and will be migrated in a separate pass; v0.2 entries carry schema_version: 2.

Purpose

A structured catalog of every robot, humanoid, and humanoid-adjacent entity from private companies, open source repositories, science fiction (film/TV/comics/games/literature), and academia.

The corpus IS the prior art commons. This is a load-bearing architectural decision. Every entry is a defensive publication artifact, not a Wikipedia entry. The commons does not sit on top of the corpus as a separate layer; the structured data in this repository, timestamped at the moment of commit, is itself the invalidity-contention material that future challenges will draw from.

The corpus serves three functions, in priority order:

Defensive publication. Every entry, at the moment of merge and timestamp, is a public disclosure of the engineering, design, and prior art it describes. prior_art_notes is not editorial commentary — it is the element-by-element analysis a competent examiner or invalidity-contention attorney could cite.
Design space map. What has been imagined, what has been built, what has been claimed, and where the gaps are.
Citation graph. Who built on whom, what lineage each design belongs to, what intellectual debts are owed.

Quality bar for entries

An entry is not done when the schema fields are filled. An entry is done when:

disclosure_citation resolves to a primary source verifiable by a third party.
first_disclosure_date is defensible against challenge — earliest verifiable public disclosure, not earliest plausible date.
prior_art_notes reads as a 102/103 anticipation analysis someone unrelated to us could cite without rewriting. It identifies specific subsystems disclosed and what claims those disclosures could anticipate.
sources cite primary references (papers, books, patents, episodes), not Wikipedia or aggregators, except where the aggregator is itself the primary source.
For patented entries, ip_citations lists actual patent numbers, and prior_art_notes points back at anticipating prior art entries by id.

Entries below this bar may be merged with a draft: true flag to make incremental progress visible, but they do not yet count as commons material.

License posture

CC0-1.0. The corpus itself is public domain dedication. Individual entries cite their sources but the structured catalog is unencumbered.

Timestamping

Because the corpus is the commons, the timestamp of disclosure for each entry must be defensible. Git commit timestamps alone are insufficient for legal purposes — they can be rewritten and are not third-party attested.

Required timestamping infrastructure:

RFC 3161 timestamping of every release tag via a recognized Time Stamping Authority (e.g., FreeTSA, DigiCert TSA). Signature artifacts committed alongside the release.
OpenTimestamps anchoring of release commits to Bitcoin (free, decentralized, cryptographically strong attestation of pre-existence).
Periodic releases tagged at minimum quarterly so that newly-merged entries receive third-party-attested timestamps within a bounded window.
Submission to discoverable indices: Google Patents non-patent literature corpus, IP.com Prior Art Database (or its open equivalent), and any other indices examiners actually use.

A commons that examiners cannot find when searching does not invalidate anything. Discoverability is not optional.

Entry schema

Each entry is one record. Required fields are marked [R], optional [O].

id                      [R]  slug, kebab-case, globally unique within corpus
canonical_name          [R]  the name most commonly used in literature
aliases                 [O]  list of alternate names, model numbers, codenames
corpus                  [R]  one of: private | open | fictional | academic
first_disclosure_date   [R]  ISO 8601 date or year; earliest verifiable public reference
disclosure_citation     [R]  source for the first_disclosure_date (DOI, ISBN, URL, patent #, episode ID)
creator                 [R]  company / lab / studio / author / collective
creator_country         [O]  ISO country code of creator
morphology_family       [R]  see morphology taxonomy below
dof_count               [O]  total degrees of freedom if disclosed
actuator_type           [O]  electric | hydraulic | pneumatic | tendon | exotic | unknown | mixed
actuator_details        [O]  specific actuator IP / topology if disclosed
height_m                [O]  meters, if disclosed
mass_kg                 [O]  kilograms, if disclosed
payload_kg              [O]  kilograms, if disclosed
power_source            [O]  battery chemistry, fuel cell, tethered, fictional, etc.
runtime_minutes         [O]  if disclosed
end_effector            [O]  hand DoF, gripper type, tendon routing, etc.
control_architecture    [O]  MPC, RL policy, behavior tree, scripted, fictional, etc.
sensing                 [O]  cameras, LiDAR, IMUs, tactile, fictional sensors
notable_capabilities    [O]  list of disclosed/claimed capabilities
ip_status               [R]  patented | open-permissive | open-copyleft | public-domain | fictional | trade-secret | unknown
ip_citations            [O]  patent numbers, license identifiers, repo URLs
prior_art_notes         [O]  what subsystems/claims this entry could anticipate as 102/103 prior art
lineage_ancestors       [O]  ids of entries this design descends from
lineage_descendants     [O]  ids of entries that descend from this (filled in later passes)
sources                 [R]  list of citations (papers, books, articles, repos, episodes)
notes                   [O]  free-text observations
disclosed_subsystems    [O]  structured tags identifying specific subsystems disclosed
                             (see subsystem taxonomy below); enables targeted prior art search
cpc_classifications     [O]  CPC classification codes for examiner discoverability
                             (e.g., "B25J 9/00" for manipulators, "G05D 1/00" for autonomous control)
draft                   [O]  boolean; true if the entry has not yet cleared the quality bar
schema_version          [R]  integer matching schema spec version
last_updated            [R]  ISO 8601 date

Morphology taxonomy

humanoid_bipedal — two legs, two arms, head; the canonical form
humanoid_wheeled — humanoid torso on wheeled base
humanoid_aquatic — humanoid form for underwater operation
humanoid_partial — torso/arms only, no locomotion
quadruped — four-legged
quadruped_armed — four-legged with manipulator arm(s)
hexapod — six-legged
wheel_leg_hybrid — articulated wheel-leg
tracked — caterpillar tracks
aerial — flying, includes drones and humanoid-aerial hybrids
serpentine — snake-like
mecha — humanoid form, piloted, typically fictional and large-scale
android — humanoid form indistinguishable from human (fictional or aspirational)
cyborg — biological substrate with mechanical augmentation
manipulator — fixed-base or mobile-base arm only
swarm — entity is a collective
transformer — morphology changes between modes
other — escape hatch with explanation in notes

IP status definitions

patented — known patents asserted, with patent numbers
open-permissive — MIT, BSD, Apache, CERN-OHL-P, etc.
open-copyleft — GPL, CERN-OHL-S, etc.
public-domain — CC0 or equivalent dedication, or expired protection
fictional — exists only in narrative; copyright on the depiction may exist but the engineering description is unencumbered as prior art
trade-secret — claimed but not disclosed
unknown — needs investigation

Subsystem taxonomy

Tags applied to disclosed_subsystems to enable targeted prior art search. An entry tags every subsystem it discloses with enough specificity to cite. Tags are append-only to preserve cross-entry searchability.

Actuators

actuator-electric-direct-drive
actuator-electric-quasi-direct-drive
actuator-electric-harmonic-drive
actuator-electric-cycloidal
actuator-electric-planetary
actuator-electric-series-elastic
actuator-electric-tendon-driven
actuator-hydraulic
actuator-pneumatic
actuator-pneumatic-muscle
actuator-spherical-multi-dof
actuator-bldc-controller
actuator-foc-controller

Mechanism

mechanism-bipedal-locomotion
mechanism-quadrupedal-locomotion
mechanism-wheel-leg-hybrid
mechanism-wheeled-balancing
mechanism-tendon-routing
mechanism-anthropomorphic-hand
mechanism-underactuated-grasping
mechanism-compliant-spine
mechanism-passive-dynamic-walking

Control

control-zmp-balancing
control-mpc
control-reduced-order-model
control-rl-policy
control-sim-to-real
control-behavior-tree
control-hard-constraint-supervisor
control-teleoperation
control-vla-vision-language-action

Sensing

sensing-stereo-camera
sensing-monocular-depth
sensing-lidar
sensing-imu
sensing-force-torque
sensing-tactile-fingertip
sensing-tactile-whole-body
sensing-proprioceptive-actuator

Power and thermal

power-li-ion
power-li-po
power-tethered
power-fuel-cell
power-hot-swap
thermal-passive
thermal-active-liquid

Software and middleware

software-ros1
software-ros2
software-yarp
software-openhrp
software-mjbots-stack

Safety

safety-hard-constraint
safety-simplex-supervisor
safety-watchdog
safety-emergency-stop
safety-collision-avoidance

This taxonomy is expected to grow. New tags are added with provenance — the first entry to introduce a tag documents it in notes.

Storage format

Master corpus: corpus.jsonl — one JSON object per line, append-only, git-tracked. Per-corpus mirrors: private.jsonl, open.jsonl, fictional.jsonl, academic.jsonl. Index: CORPUS_INDEX.md — generated, alphabetical by canonical_name with id and one-line summary. Lineage graph: lineage.json — derived, ancestor/descendant DAG.

Versioning

Schema version increments on breaking changes. Entries carry schema_version so older entries can be migrated. v0.1 is the starting point and should be expected to evolve once the seed slice exposes inadequacies. ```