Nadia is a high-performance bipedal humanoid robot developed by the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) in collaboration with Boardwalk Robotics, named after gymnast Nadia Comaneci to reflect its ambitious range-of-motion goals. It features 29 joints with a hybrid actuation system combining electric arms (7 DOF) and hydraulic legs (5 DOF), along with a carbon-fiber exoskeleton structure. Funded by the US Office of Naval Research and NASA Johnson Space Center, Nadia is designed for disaster response, explosive ordnance disposal, and other hazardous human environments.
Primary use case: Research
Height
165 cm
Weight
100 kg
DOF
37
Height
165 cm
Weight
100 kg
Degrees of Freedom
37
Locomotion
Bipedal
Autonomy Level
research
Availability
Research Only
Primary Use Case
Research
All-electric humanoid robot Alex revealed by IHMC. No hydraulics, battery-powered, designed for real-world urban environments and first-responder scenarios. Predecessor Nadia was lab-tethered; Alex is untethered. Demo at IHMC open house includes door traversal, shadow boxing. Design competition for new head announced.
The US Army announced five winners of its xTechHumanoid competition from a pool of 103 applicants, selecting finalists for their potential military applications of humanoid robots. The winners — ACES Group, IHMC Robotics, Hydroplane Limited, Ras Labs, and Velocity Explorations — each received $25,000 and demonstrated technologies including batteries, tactile sensors, and communication-interpreting software. The Army emphasized both commercial robotics progress and significant remaining technical challenges, particularly around speed, payload, and endurance.
UCLA researchers built PhoneBot, a 19-inch humanoid robot that uses retired Android smartphones as its brain with $400 in additional hardware, capable of walking, twisting its torso, and getting up after falling. Tesla filed a patent for flexible touch-sensitive robot skin for its Optimus humanoid's hands, while EPFL unveiled a threadlike FiberMotor for wearable robotics. Separately, Mecka raised $60M in a Sequoia-led round and Ultra raised $62M to scale AI warehouse robots.