Wroclaw University of Technology · research humanoid
FLASH
A social research robot on a self-balancing two-wheel base with an expressive head showing six emotions and arms with hands, built to study how people respond to robot companions.
- Price
- —Not published
- Height
- —Not published
- Weight
- —Not published
- Payload
- —Not published
- Speed
- —Not published
- Battery
- —Not published
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Why it matters
A discontinued humanoid from Wroclaw University of Technology (Jan Kedzierski).
Real-world use
No customers or deployments reported yet.
Timeline
- First shown
- 2012
- Released
- Not yet
Maker
Wroclaw University of TechnologyUniversity lab · founded 1945 · Wrocław, Polandpublic university; FLASH/EMYS work was part of the EU-funded LIREC project
Public attention
A historic robot: no longer sold or in use, so it is not ranked against current humanoids.
- No Wikipedia article of its own yet
- No recent press stories listed yet
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
- Maxon brushed DC motors; 51 DoF (arms 7 each, hands 12 each, head 11, wheels 2) on a self-balancing two-wheel base.
- Hands
- 12 DoF per hand.
- Sensors & vision
- Hokuyo URG laser range finder, Analog Devices inertial system, Microsoft Kinect, Logitech QuickCam Sphere camera.
- Compute
- microATX board with an Intel i7 quad-core CPU, plus a Freescale PowerPC MPC555 controller.
- Battery & power
- Main 42 V, 16 Ah lithium-polymer pack and a 16.8 V, 10 Ah secondary pack; about 2 hours of operation.
- Materials & build
- Aluminium chassis; plastic parts made by selective laser sintering and rapid prototyping.
- AI & software
- Ubuntu Linux and Windows 7; Gostai Urbi, FAtiMA, Player, Adept ARIA, OpenCV, SDL, Microsoft Speech API, Loquendo, PittPatt and OpenNI. Partly autonomous and teleoperable.
- Other details
- Its EMYS head shows six emotions (happiness, sadness, surprise, anger, weariness, disgust). Developed in the EU LIREC companion-robot project; the head later became the EMYS educational robot, sold by EMYS Inc. (founded 2018 by Jan Kędzierski).
Named suppliers:IntelmaxonMicrosoft (Kinect)HokuyoMicrosoftAnalog Devices
From the maker
FLASH is the only humanoid from Wroclaw University of Technology (Jan Kedzierski) in the atlas.
Watch FLASH
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
- not sold (research robot)
- Where it is sold or used
- Wroclaw University of Technology, Poland
Side by side with its peers
Picked by the same rules for every humanoid: another maker’s robot that moves the same way, is at the same stage and does at least one of the same main jobs, first shown within two years. Closer size and price rank higher. How we choose
| Measure | No public photo yetWe only show photos we're allowed to useFLASHWroclaw University of Technology (Jan Kedzierski) |  DreamerUniversity of Texas at Austin and Meka RoboticsSame job: social · Both on wheels · Both past robots |  REEMPAL RoboticsSame job: social · Both on wheels · Both past robots |  PepperSoftBank Mobile and Aldebaran RoboticsSame job: social · Both on wheels · Both past robots |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First shown | 2012 | 2012 | 2010 | 2014-06-05 |
| Status | Discontinued | Retired | Discontinued | Discontinued |
| Height | — | — | 170 cm | 121 cm |
| Weight | — | — | 90 kg | 28 kg |
| Joints | — | — | 22 | 20 |
| Speed | — | — | 4 km/h | 3 km/h |
| Payload | — | — | 30 kg | — |
| Battery | — | — | 8 h | 12 h |
| Price | — | — | — | $1,930 |
Sources
Figures come from press coverage. Every link below backs something on this page.
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