Virginia Tech

Virginia Tech, the public university in Blacksburg founded in 1872, housed the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory, RoMeLa, while Dennis Hong made it the best known academic humanoid shop in the United States. Hong founded the lab there and built its first humanoid soccer player, DARwIn, in 2004. CHARLI, started in 2008 by Hong and graduate students on USD 20,000 of seed money, is described by UCLA as America's first full-size walking two-legged humanoid; CHARLI-2 made Time's best inventions list in 2011 and won the Louis Vuitton best humanoid award at RoboCup that year.

The lab's most lasting output was DARwIn-OP, a 20-joint miniature humanoid using Robotis Dynamixel MX-28 servos, developed from 2010 with Purdue, Penn and Robotis under a USD 1.2 million NSF grant as a fully open platform. It won the RoboCup kid-size league in 2011, 2012 and 2013 and was built and sold by Robotis, which went on to its own OP2 and OP3.

A US Navy contract produced SAFFiR, a heavier CHARLI derivative with linear actuators meant to fight fires aboard ships, shown in 2012, and the THOR line for the DARPA Robotics Challenge. Hong moved RoMeLa to UCLA in 2014 with team and projects; THOR-RD competed at the 2015 DRC finals under UCLA. Virginia Tech no longer runs a humanoid programme of note.