Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (H2T, High Performance Humanoid Technologies Lab) · industrial humanoid
ARMAR-6
A collaborative wheeled humanoid with a telescoping torso (working height over 2.4 m), torque-sensing arms that lift 10 kg each at full extension, and five-finger underactuated hands, built in the EU SecondHands project.
- Price
- —Not published
- Height
- —Not published
- Weight
- —Not published
- Payload
- 10 kgCarries more than 41%
- Speed
- —Not published
- Battery
- —Not published
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Why it matters
Designed to recognise when a human maintenance technician needs help and offer it, tested at Ocado's warehouses.
Real-world use
Tested at an Ocado fulfilment centre in the UK over about two years.
Timeline
- First shown
- 2018-01-11
- Released
- Not yet
Maker
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (H2T, High Performance Humanoid Technologies Lab)University lab · founded 2009 · Karlsruhe, GermanyPublic university (budget about EUR 1.16 billion, 2023); ARMAR-III funded by the DFG SFB 588 programme, ARMAR-6 by the EU SecondHands project,…
How it stacks up
Against other humanoids that publish the figure. Pick a measure.
ARMAR-6 carries more than 41% of the 132 other humanoids that publish a payload. Bars show the 7 closest in date.
Not published by the maker: height, weight, speed, joints, battery, price.
What it has been shown doing
1 of 14 skills we track, each from a public video or report. Demos can be staged or remote-controlled; we say so when the source does.
- Use toolsOcado says it uses tools such as power drills and hammers with both arms; tested in Ocado warehouse helping technicians · Feb 2018 · ocadogroup.com
Not shown yet:SortAssembleFoldKitchenFineStairsTerrainGet upRunJumpCarryOn siteAutonomous
Public attention
How much public attention ARMAR-6 gets, from open data.
- No Wikipedia article of its own yet
- 2 news stories from reputable press listed on this page
- 1 reported deployment
Measures how much people read and write about a robot, not how good it is. Measured 2026-10-13; same method for every robot. How it is measured
What’s inside
The parts the company has talked about publicly.
- Movement
- Wheeled base
- Actuators & motors
- 16 brushless high-torque DC motors (RoboDrive) with harmonic drives in custom sensor-actuator-controller units; 27 degrees of freedom (head 2, each arm 8, each hand 2, torso 1, mobile base 4) ARMAR entry.
- Hands
- 2 degrees of freedom per hand, driven by two motors each.
- Sensors & vision
- Roboception rc_visard 160 and two Point Grey Flea3 cameras for stereo vision, an RGB-D sensor, 6D force-torque sensors in the wrists; each arm joint has absolute and incremental position sensors, a torque sensor and a 9-axis IMU; two laser scanners in the base. Freethink reports five cameras and markerless 3D human pose estimation.
- Compute
- Four PCs, each with an Intel Core i7-6700 and 32 GB RAM, plus an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 GPU.
- Battery & power
- 48 V battery for 2-3 hours, or 220 V external power.
- Materials & build
- Aluminium and 3D-printed parts.
- AI & software
- Ubuntu 14.04 with KIT's ArmarX robot software framework; understands spoken commands and can anticipate what a technician needs.
- Other details
- Arms stop immediately when they sense a collision with a person. Developed in the EU-funded SecondHands project as a maintenance helper.
Named suppliers:NVIDIAIntelHarmonic Drive
Lineage
Every Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (H2T) humanoid in order.
Watch ARMAR-6
Made, sold and where
Unit counts are usually company figures; analysts often disagree.
- Price
- Not published
- How to get one
- No official buying page found
- Sold or delivered
- Never sold.
- Where it is sold or used
- Germany; United Kingdom (trials)
- Customers and pilots
- Ocado (tested at a fulfilment centre, about 2018-2020)
Where it works
1 reported deployment.
- Trial ended
Ocado · Ocado fulfilment centre · since 2018
KIT's ARMAR-6 spent about two years helping maintenance technicians at an Ocado fulfilment centre in the SecondHands project. Freethink
News
The latest 2, newest first. Summaries are ours; tap through for the original.
- SecondHands project ends
The EU project that built ARMAR-6 wrapped up after trials with Ocado maintenance staff.
Freethink - KIT announces ARMAR-6
The team presented ARMAR-6 as a collaborative robot for maintenance work.
Freethink
Sources
Figures come from the maker. Every link below backs something on this page.
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