The project NimbRo – Learning Humanoid Robots – was initially funded by the
German Research Foundation (DFG). Focus was on the development of humanoid robots. Both hardware and software were developed for perception, planning, and learning. The robot systems have been integrated and tested in challenging domains. Initially, humanoid soccer robots and communication robots for intuitive
multimodal interactions with humans were developed. In recent years, robots have also been developed for domestic service,
search and rescue,
micro aerial vehicles, and
bin picking. NimbRo has competed in numerous robot soccer competitions. One of the challenges of designing a robot for humanoid soccer is the generation of dynamic movements while maintaining balance, an area of robot development important in practical applications. Hardware and software developed by NimbRo has been used by multiple other robotics competition teams. NimbRo competed in the 2016
Amazon Picking Challenge, and the 2017 Amazon Robotics Challenge. Bin picking robots need to detect objects in complex scenes, estimate their pose, grasp them, and place the objects at a target location. The mobile manipulation robot
Momaro was designed for the
DARPA Robotics Challenge and inspired the
Centauro robot, which was developed the European research Project CENTAURO. The 2018 NimbRo-OP2X robot played in the RoboCup Humanoid AdultSize class. It is 135 tall and has a weight of 18 kg. Its hard- and software are
open source. Its structural parts are 3D-printed from polymers. For the ANA Avatar XPRIZE competition, NimbRo developed an immersive
telepresence system consisting of an anthropomorphic
mobile robot and an operation station. In 2022, NimbRo won the Finals and received the Grand Prize of 5 Million US$. == Competitions and challenges ==