Video shows progress of IHMC humanoid robot Nadia

The IHMC Robotics team has unveiled a video of the first humanoid robot built in-house in nearly 10 years.  

Working with Boardwalk Robotics, the IHMC team has designed Nadia as the next generation of humanoid robots the team has created. 

The Nadia project aims to develop highly mobile ground robots that can function in indoor and urban environments where stairs, ladders, and debris require robots to have mobility and manipulation dexterity nearing that of a human. The applications of this design could be particularly useful in explosive ordinance disposal, nuclear remediation, disaster response, firefighting, and other scenarios that might be dangerous for humans.  

Nadia’s development is supported by several sources, including the Office of Naval Research (ONR), Army Research Laboratory (ARL), NASA Johnson Space Center, and TARDEC.  In the summer of 2022, IHMC received a grant totaling $3 million from ONR to continue work on the project.

Research Scientist Dr. Robert Griffin notes that Nadia’s range of motion and power density are significant improvements over humanoids IHMC has worked with previously. Key elements of this version of Nadia are the joint designs, which feature mechanisms that aim at achieving near human-level ranges of motion in the hips and knees, and the use of a carbon-fiber exoskeleton structure.  

“We hope to use this design to enable multicontact motions, where the robot can use any part of its body to make contact with the world, as well as survive falls in the long run,” Griffin says. 

Watch Nadia’s progress here:

You can read the companion review by Evan Ackerman and the IEEE Spectrum here.

IHMC is a not-for-profit research institute of the Florida University System where researchers pioneer science and technology aimed at leveraging and extending human capabilities. IHMC researchers and staff collaborate extensively with the government, industry and academia to help develop breakthrough technologies. IHMC research partners have included: DARPA, the National Science Foundation, NASA, Army, Navy, Air Force, National Institutes of Health, IBM, Microsoft, Honda, Boeing, Lockheed, and many others.