PAL Robotics

PAL Robotics was set up in Barcelona in 2004 by Francesco Ferro, a Politecnico di Torino telecoms engineer who remains CEO, as co-founder. The company describes itself as part of the PAL Technology Group of Abu Dhabi, and its first job was a contract for a client in the United Arab Emirates to build a robot that could physically play chess. It remains privately held, with offices in Toulouse and Bari added later, and its about page puts the team at roughly 100 people serving customers in more than 30 countries.

That chess contract produced REEM-A in 2005, which the company calls Europe's first fully autonomous humanoid biped; by 2006 it walked, played chess with the Hydra engine and recognised faces. REEM-B followed in 2008, the wheeled REEM service robot in 2010, the full-size REEM-C biped in 2013 and the torque-controlled TALOS research humanoid in 2017, later joined by the Kangaroo jumping biped. Its volume products are not humanoids but the TIAGo mobile manipulator, TIAGo Pro and the ARI social robot.

PAL sells research platforms to universities and EU projects in small numbers; it has never published total robots delivered, revenue or funding, and no venture rounds are on record. It is the longest-running humanoid builder in Europe, but a small one.