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High Performance Humanoid Technologies Lab (H2T), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

Research Institute

KIT research chair in Karlsruhe led by Prof. Tamim Asfour, developer of the ARMAR humanoid robot family from ARMAR-I (2000) to the household robot ARMAR-7.

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Company Overview

The High Performance Humanoid Technologies Lab (H2T) is a chair within the Institute for Anthropomatics and Robotics (IAR) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Karlsruhe, Germany. The chair is headed by Prof. Tamim Asfour, who has led humanoid robot research at Karlsruhe since 2003 and has developed the ARMAR family of humanoid robots since the late 1990s. Asfour is spokesperson of the Robotics Institute Germany (RIG) and was named an IEEE Fellow effective 1 January 2026.

H2T researches and develops humanoid robot technologies and systems intended to perform versatile tasks in real-world environments alongside people. Listed research topics include mechano-informatics, visual and haptic grasping, mobile manipulation, learning from human observation, human movement analysis, active vision and haptic exploration, and software and hardware architectures for robots. The lab also works on robot hands, the KIT gripper, robot components and wearable exoskeletons and hand prostheses designed to support people in moving, grasping and lifting.

The ARMAR series is the lab's best-known output. ARMAR-I, built in 2000, had 25 mechanical degrees of freedom. ARMAR-II (2002) combined a 4-DOF body with two 7-DOF arms of 65 cm and a stereo camera head. ARMAR-III, designed from 2006, has 43 DOF with position, velocity and force-torque sensing and remains functional after nearly two decades; it is shown in KIT's history exhibition at the ZKM. ARMAR-4 is a 170 cm, 70 kg full-body humanoid with 63 active DOF, 63 actuators, 214 sensors, 76 microcontrollers and three onboard PCs. ARMAR-6 was built for collaborative maintenance tasks with human technicians and carries four computers in its mobile base. The newest model, ARMAR-7, targets households and care facilities: it has two 8-DOF arms, 4-DOF hands, a 3-DOF head and a 2-DOF knee/hip kinematic, RGB cameras in each hand and multiple head camera systems, and has been demonstrated unloading dishwashers, sorting laundry and organizing kitchens to support elderly people in daily activities. The Karlsruhe Humanoid Head used on ARMAR-III and ARMAR-4 has 7 DOF, six microphones and a 6D inertial sensor.

Funding for the lab's work includes EU support (ARMAR-7 was part-funded by the EU) and the Carl Zeiss Stiftung, which funds the AI-based assistive robotics project JuBot. KIT joined the Cyber Valley Innovation Campus in 2024. The lab is located at Adenauerring 12, Karlsruhe, and publishes robot videos through its YouTube channel and a Facebook page for the ARMAR robot family.

Capabilities & Activities

Primary type & automation activities this supplier delivers:

Applications & Industries

Product Categories

Products & Solutions

ARMAR-7

Household and care humanoid that unloads dishwashers, sorts laundry and organizes kitchens.

ARMAR-6

Collaborative humanoid designed to assist technicians in maintenance tasks.

ARMAR-4

Full-body research humanoid with 63 active DOF and 214 sensors.

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Contact High Performance Humanoid Technologies Lab (H2T), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

WEBSITE

https://h2t.iar.kit.edu

EMAIL

[email protected]

PHONE

+49 721 608-48277

HEADQUARTERS

Adenauerring 12
Karlsruhe , Baden-Württemberg  76131

Germany

Company Facts

Founded

-

Primary Role

Research Institute

Company Size

-

Primary Region

Europe

Annual Sales

-

Funding Stage

Grant / Non-profit

Funding Total

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Keywords

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