University of Bonn
The Autonomous Intelligent Systems group at the University of Bonn led by Sven Behnke runs team NimbRo, which builds open source humanoids, has won many RoboCup Humanoid League titles and won the ANA Avatar XPRIZE in 2022.
- Type
- university
- Headquarters
- Bonn, Germany
- Founded
- 1818
- Founders
- n/a
- Status
- active
- Employees (est.)
- n/d
- Disclosed funding
- n/d
- Valuation
- n/d
- Listed
- private
- Website
- ais.uni-bonn.de
What the record says.
The University of Bonn, founded in 1818, hosts one of the longest-running academic humanoid groups in Europe. Sven Behnke has held the chair for Autonomous Intelligent Systems at Computer Science Institute VI since 2008 and runs team NimbRo. The group's focus is cognitive robotics, computer vision and machine learning; it builds robots to compete, not to sell.
Its humanoids are the NimbRo-OP family, open-platform TeenSize and AdultSize soccer robots with the NimbRo-OP2X as the current model. NimbRo soccer robots have won many RoboCup Humanoid League titles, including every AdultSize competition in 2018 and 2019. The group also built Momaro, a wheeled-legged manipulator for the DARPA Robotics Challenge.
Its widest recognition came on 5 November 2022 in Long Beach, when NimbRo won the ANA Avatar XPRIZE finals and the USD 5 million grand prize. Its teleoperated avatar let an operator judge finish all ten tasks in 5 minutes 50 seconds for a perfect 15 out of 15 score. Behnke is also a principal investigator at the Lamarr Institute and coordinates Bonn's part of the Robotics Institute Germany programme running from 2024 to 2028. Nothing from the lab has been commercialised as a humanoid product; its output is papers, open designs and trained researchers.
1 humanoid tracked.
Milestones.
Team NimbRo wins the ANA Avatar XPRIZE
At the finals in Long Beach, University of Bonn's NimbRo team wins the 5 million dollar grand prize for a telepresence avatar system, ahead of Pollen Robotics and Northeastern. The prize advances telepresence humanoids and haptic teleoperation.
Europe's humanoids: who builds them and what you can order
31 of the 182 humanoids on record come from seven European countries. Three can be ordered, two have a price, and the dearest of those is $75,000 for a robot that does not walk.
Humanoid races, games and fights: what the competitions proved
Our record holds 11 competition events from 1997 to 2025 and 17 machines tied to them. Six can be ordered, three at a public price, and 13 of the 17 carry a teleoperation flag of yes or partial.
Open-source humanoids: what you can actually build
24 of the 182 humanoids on record call themselves open source. 15 publish hardware files and software, 3 name a licence, 12 can be ordered, and none of the four on preorder has any autonomy evidence yet.
Sources
- 01NimbRoUniversity of Bonn
- 02Our team NimbRo won the ANA Avatar XPRIZE FinalsUniversity of Bonn
- 03Sven Behnke, Autonomous Intelligent SystemsUniversity of Bonn
- 04NimbRo announced as winner of the $10M ANA Avatar XPRIZEXPRIZE Foundation