What’s behind our AI stack KinetIQ? In a recent video, we showed how KinetIQ orchestrates multiple tasks in industrial and service environments, operating across different embodiments and multiple timescales. Today, we’re releasing a blog post that details the technical foundations behind KinetIQ: its core components, design decisions shaping the architecture, and the challenges we’re working through today. With this stack, our ambition is to build what we think of as a capability factory. It’s a scalable, cost-efficient way to rapidly create, validate, and harden complex fleet-level behaviors that meet real-world standards. Read more here: https://thehumanoid.ai/ai/ One of the topics we cover in the article is sport-mode data preprocessing. In the accompanying video, we compare 3 approaches: standard 1x execution, a naive 2.6x runtime speedup, and data-side speedup with sport-mode preprocessing. The result is faster policy execution without compromising reliability in manipulation tasks. But sport mode is only one small piece of the overall architecture. There’s still much work ahead. Building general-purpose Physical AI requires progress across perception, learning, control systems, data infrastructure, and systems engineering. If you’re interested in how we’re approaching this challenge, the full post goes much deeper into the system design and long-term vision.
Humanoid
Robotics Engineering
First AI and robotics company in the UK, creating the world’s leading, commercially scalable, and safe humanoid robots.
About us
In a world where artificial intelligence opens up new horizons, our faith in its potential unveils a new outlook where, together, humans and machines build a new future filled with knowledge, inspiration, and incredible discoveries. The development of a functional humanoid robot underpins an era of abundance and well-being where poverty will disappear, and people will be able to choose what they want to do. We can imagine millions of bipedal robots doing more work than all human labour does today freeing people from the servitude of some repetitive and boring tasks that nobody likes to perform. We believe that we have enough abundance to take care of everyone who is displaced. Eventually, providing a universal basic income will lead to the true evolution of our civilization. Labor shortages loom, as the demands on our built environment rise. With the world’s workforce increasingly moving away from undesirable tasks, the manufacturing, construction, and logistics industries critical to our daily lives are left exposed. By deploying our general-purpose humanoid robots in environments deemed hazardous or monotonous, we envision a future where human well-being is safeguarded while closing the gaps in critical global labour needs.
- Website
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https://thehumanoid.ai
External link for Humanoid
- Industry
- Robotics Engineering
- Company size
- 51-200 employees
- Headquarters
- London
- Type
- Privately Held
- Founded
- 2024
- Specialties
- robotics, artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, industrial robotics, and computer vision
Locations
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Primary
Get directions
London, GB
Employees at Humanoid
Updates
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Over the past 150 years, only a few inventions have changed the world: phones, cars, computers. We believe the next big thing is humanoid robots. Today, we’re releasing our new documentary, an honest look at what it really takes to be part of the humanoid race. What does it mean to build a humanoid in seven months, and the next one in just five? How do you move forward when breakthroughs from a year ago already feel like old news? Spoiler: we love the energy. In this film, you’ll hear directly from our engineering, hardware, product, and other teams sharing their perspectives on the journey of turning physical AI into reality. Welcome behind the scenes! Watch here: https://lnkd.in/dbzKcC7P
HMND SERIES E02 | Our Path to Global Leadership in Industrial AI Humanoid Robotics
https://www.youtube.com/
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We’re hiring. As we continue to scale humanoid robotics from research into real-world deployment, including the development of our KinetIQ AI framework for robot fleet orchestration, we're expanding and looking for people to help scale from single robots to coordinated fleets. We currently have 70+ open roles across London (UK), Boston (US), and Vancouver (Canada), spanning AI, robotics, engineering, manufacturing, operations, and corporate functions. Explore our open roles here: https://lnkd.in/ed8RKhGc #hiring #robotics #humanoid
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Today we’re introducing KinetIQ, our own AI framework for end-to-end orchestration of humanoid robot fleets. With KinetIQ, a single system can coordinate robots with different embodiments — wheeled and bipedal — across industrial, service, and home environments. KinetIQ manages both fleet-level operations and individual robot behaviour within one multi-layer architecture. At its core, KinetIQ works across multiple timescales. The framework consists of 4 cognitive layers: from high-level task allocation and workflow optimisation down to VLA-based task execution and RL-trained whole-body control. In a new video, we show how KinetIQ helps orchestrate both of our product lines: - Wheeled robots running industrial workflows in retail, logistics, and manufacturing - A bipedal R&D platform for service and home interactions Read more in the first comment.
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Today, more than 200 professionals are building the next generation of humanoid robotics at Humanoid, and we are hiring for 17 AI-focused roles in London (UK), Boston (US), and Vancouver (Canada). Our founder recently spoke to Imaging and Machine Vision Europe about a widening gap between the demand for advanced AI skills and the available talent pool, particularly across Europe and North America. As AI systems become more central to real-world applications, competition for experienced practitioners is increasing. At Humanoid, we see this not as a constraint, but as a catalyst. Building AI that operates reliably in industrial environments requires deep expertise across learning, perception, simulation, and systems integration. If you're passionate about AI, robotics, and making a real impact, join us! Explore our open roles here: https://lnkd.in/ed8RKhGc
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Following a recent conversation with our Chief Strategy Officer, Alina Kolpakova, Brian Heater published an article on Humanoid’s approach to market entry. The piece reflects a core principle that has guided us from day one: we‘re a commercially oriented company. We want to deliver real ROI for real customers, building sustainable revenue streams, and bringing value to industries. That’s why we’re prioritizing the wheeled platform first. It addresses most real-world industrial use cases today, and allows customers to deploy faster and see value sooner. At the same time, bipedal humanoids remain a key part of our long-term roadmap, particularly for home environments. As Alina puts it: “I think we'll be the first company to actually generate revenue, and I think [being headquartered in Europe] helps us get to market faster, because we have huge demand with the ageing population. We are working closely with the government, and we're also working with certification bodies here to actually move very fast.” This is how humanoid robotics moves from idea to real product.
Humanoid's Alina Kolpakova from this week's Automated newsletter. Subscribe: https://lnkd.in/ejtMtUgy UK-based Humanoid has been coming in hot with the partnership news of late. Just last week saw both the announcement of a Siemens pilot and Schaeffler’s order of “hundreds” of units over the next half-decade. On Monday, the company announced another pilot, this time with the Ford Innovation Centre in Cologne, Germany, where the system went to work moving around totes and car parts. It’s a solid opening for 2026 for a company that really hit the ground running around the midway point last year. There’s one thing you won’t see listed among this recent dispatch of press releases: robot legs. The above deployments — and, for that matter, all Humanoid industrial partnerships for the foreseeable future — will have none to stand on. While having the option of both legs and wheels has been a key selling point for the firm since day one, you’re likely to see the latter in the vast majority of industry deployments — Humanoid’s primary focus, at least for the next few years. The breakdown offers fairly unique insight into the form factors, as Humanoid has a stake in both. AMR proponents have long insisted that wheels are a perfectly acceptable — and sometimes superior — choice for the industrial setting. I hear various numbers cited regarding the efficacy of wheels in these environments, with many people landing around 80%. When industrial humanoids began to populate VC balance sheets, however, it was like the third encore at a ZZ Top concert: all anyone cared about was legs. If you had asked me, say, six years ago, what was next for industrial robotics, I no doubt would have pointed to mobile manipulation. Though my prediction would have been decidedly more conservative, resembling an AMR fitted with vertically elevated robot arms for bin picking. If I was feeling adventurous in a given moment, it might have more closely resembled Array, the automated order picking machine Locus told us about, a month or two back.
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We’re excited to welcome Sebastian Thrun as an Advisor at Humanoid. Sebastian will support us across our strategy, recruiting, key technology decisions, fundraising, and partnerships as we scale. He is a global leader in AI and robotics: co-founder of Google X and Waymo, former Google VP and Fellow, long-time Stanford professor, and founder of Udacity, which has educated millions worldwide in AI and software engineering. United by the belief that robotics should deliver real value in the real world, we’re excited for what we can build together. Welcome, Sebastian!
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This week, we proudly welcomed Lord Vallance, Minister for Science, Innovation, Research and Nuclear, to our Humanoid headquarters in London. We spoke about what it takes to accelerate innovation in robotics, from strengthening the UK tech ecosystem and unlocking investment opportunities, to building the right support structures. As a robotics company headquartered in the UK, we are proud to help bring the country onto the global stage of innovation. The UK has exceptional talent, industrial heritage, and all the ingredients needed to lead the next wave of robotics. Thank you to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology for the open dialogue, the support, and the shared ambition. The next chapter of British innovation is already taking shape. Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian
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Humanoid and Siemens successfully completed a POC testing humanoid robots in industrial logistics. The POC focused on a tote-to-conveyor destacking task within Siemens’ logistics process. HMND 01 autonomously picked, transported, and placed totes in a live production environment during a two-week on-site deployment at the Siemens Electronics Factory in Erlangen. Target metrics for the POC included: - Throughput of 60 tote moves per hour - Operation with 2 different tote sizes - Continuous autonomous task execution for over 30 minutes - Uptime exceeding 8 hours Performance was evaluated based on overall and autonomous pick-and-place success rates, both exceeding 90%. This is the first step in our broader partnership with Siemens. We see humanoid robots move toward the real world, and such collaborations help accelerate that transition! Learn more here: https://lnkd.in/dAvxX8HH