Astra

Astra is Apptronik's upper-body humanoid — the modular precursor that fed directly into Apollo. The Austin, TX team built it as a force-controlled torso + dual-arm system that could mount on any mobile base, deliberately choosing to nail down dexterous manipulation before solving bipedal walking. IEEE Spectrum's profile of the program described Astra's 17 DoF — two for the torso, three for the neck, and six per arm — driven by series-elastic, torque-controlled actuators so the robot can work safely around people (spectrum.ieee.org).

Astra uses Psyonic's Ability Hand at each wrist, giving it five-finger human-scale dexterity. By the time Apollo was unveiled in 2023, Astra had already been running pilot deployments — Apptronik states the platform is "out in the world doing pilot projects with clients, mostly in the logistics space" — and the lessons from that fleet shaped Apollo's manipulation stack (roboticgizmos.com).

Astra remains a research/pilot SKU rather than a mass-production product: Apptronik's commercial focus has shifted onto Apollo (Mercedes-Benz pilots, $935M funding), but Astra continues to act as a flexible upper-body testbed inside the company.