Technical University of Munich
"The Entrepreneurial University"
Public research university in Munich whose Chair of Applied Mechanics built the 25-joint biped LOLA and whose MIRMI institute develops the GARMI care humanoid.
The Technical University of Munich (TUM) is a public research university in Bavaria, Germany. It was founded on 12 April 1868 by King Ludwig II of Bavaria as the Polytechnische Schule Muenchen, and its main campus is at Arcisstrasse 21 in central Munich. According to the university's own facts and figures page, TUM has about 42,700 students, of whom 32 percent come from abroad, more than 10,800 staff and 15 schools and departments, plus an offshore campus, TUM Asia, in Singapore and international offices in Beijing, Brussels, Sao Paulo, Mumbai and San Francisco. Its motto is The Entrepreneurial University.
For RobotToday's humanoid landscape, TUM is listed for LOLA, a full-size biped built at the Chair of Applied Mechanics in the TUM School of Engineering and Design. LOLA was designed and manufactured entirely in house as a research platform for fast, human-like walking. Published descriptions give a height of about 180 cm and a mass of roughly 55 kg. A 2008 paper by Sebastian Lohmeier, Thomas Buschmann, Heinz Ulbrich and Friedrich Pfeiffer described a 22-degree-of-freedom configuration with 7-DoF legs that include actively driven toe joints. Later configurations are listed with 25 actuated joints: seven per leg, two in the pelvis and three per arm, plus a three-axis stereo camera head. The joints are modular units with brushless permanent-magnet synchronous motors and mostly Harmonic Drive gears. Each joint has an incremental encoder, an absolute angle encoder and a limit switch, with decentralised joint controllers. Two custom force/torque sensors sit in the feet and a high-precision inertial unit in the upper body.
The chair uses LOLA to develop and test real-time walking pattern generation and balance control in cluttered and changing environments, not only in predefined laboratory setups. IEEE Spectrum reported in 2021 that the team had added degrees of freedom to the arms so that LOLA could use multi-contact locomotion, bracing against walls or railings while crossing uneven terrain at 1.8 km/h, and that its top speed on flat ground was 3.38 km/h. The research was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The visual perception system was developed with TUM's Chair for Computer Aided Medical Procedures and Augmented Reality. The chair also applies methods developed on LOLA to compensating for the inaccuracy of industrial robots, to cobot bin picking, and to gait-based simulation and testing of prostheses. It publishes an open code library for robot kinematics, trajectory interpolation and logging.
TUM's wider robotics activity is grouped in the Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MIRMI), formerly the Munich School of Robotics and Machine Intelligence. MIRMI's Geriatronics Research Center in Garmisch-Partenkirchen develops GARMI, which the institute describes as a humanoid robotic assistant for older adults. According to TUM's 2024 press release, GARMI moves on a mobile base and has a robotic arm with seven joints and an artificial hand, with force sensors that stop motion almost immediately on contact. In TUM's 2024 demonstrations at ICRA in Yokohama, it brought water and breakfast to a bedside, set up telemedical examinations with ECG, blood pressure and ultrasound devices, and guided rehabilitation exercises. It used a language model to interpret commands and a digital twin to check motions before execution. The centre works with Caritas and runs a test apartment for older people. TUM states that GARMI is still a research system and that deployment in care homes is several years away.
TUM is a university rather than a robot vendor. Its robots are research platforms that are not offered for sale, and its role in the directory is as a research and innovation centre in the bipedal segment.
Primary type & automation activities this supplier delivers:
LOLA
Full-size research biped built in house at TUM's Chair of Applied Mechanics for fast, human-like walking, real-time gait planning and multi-contact locomotion.
GARMI
Humanoid assistance robot from TUM MIRMI's Geriatronics center for elderly care: household help, telemedical exams and guided rehab exercises; still in research.
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Contact Technical University of Munich
WEBSITE
https://www.tum.deHEADQUARTERS
Germany
Company Facts
Founded
1868
Primary Role
Research Institute
Company Size
-
Primary Region
Europe
Annual Sales
-
Funding Stage
Grant / Non-profit
Funding Total
-
Keywords
- Technical University of Munich
- TUM
- Technische Universitaet Muenchen
- LOLA biped
- Chair of Applied Mechanics
- MIRMI
- GARMI
- geriatronics
- biped walking control
- multi-contact locomotion
- Harmonic Drive joints
- gait research
- Research Institute
- Humanoid
- Legged Robot
- Biped
- Education & Research
- Healthcare & Senior Care
- Research Platform
- Aged Care
