Humanoids

The robotics landscape is at a turning point, fuelled by hardware advances and AI breakthroughs. Massive investments are being made in robotics around the world to create a humanoid robot that can perform almost all the tasks that a human does today. Germany is ideally placed to become a major European and global player in the newly sparked competition in humanoid robotics and to hold its own against the massive competition from the USA and China.

Our institute has a leading position in the research of humanoid robots in Europe: we combine expertise from different teams for hardware development as well as for gait control, physical interaction or AI applications. We are also very well networked: We coordinate the EU network of excellence for AI-based robotics euROBIN, in which most of the top robotics institutes across Europe are involved. As part of the Robotics Institute Germany, we are responsible for technology transfer and cooperation with industry.

Agile Justin

The humanoid robot Agile Justin is a platform for research in learning artificial intelligence (AI) for dextrous manipulation. Areas of application for the system are, in particular, household work and assisting astronauts in space.

David

neoDavid is a robust humanoid robot with skilful manipulation capabilities, developed at DLR. The main focus in the development of neoDavid is to come as close as possible to human capabilities – especially in terms of dynamics, dexterity and robustness.

Rollin' Justin

In the future humanoid robots are envisioned in household applications as well as in space environments. The capability to carry out complex manipulation tasks is a key issue. The mobile humanoid robot Rollin' Justin is utilized as a research platform for autonomous dexterous mobile manipulation in human environments.

TORO

The humanoid walking robot TORO (TOrque-controlled humanoid RObot) is a research platform for scientific topics dealing with bipedal movement and dynamics. This includes things such as robust walking, climbing stairs and multi-contact scenarios.

SpaceJustin (2010–2016)

SpaceJustin is a humanoid upper body consisting of two Light-Weight Robot arms, two DLR-HIT Hands II, a torso and a head. Equipped with various force and optical sensors it can be operated in telemanipulation and shared autonomy modes.

Table Justin (2006–2011)

Table Justin was the first humanoid robot developed by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). This humanoid two-arm system was created as a research platform for investigating two-handed dexterity.