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London, UK (January 5, 2025) — Humanoid, a UK-based AI and robotics company, is accelerating the development of its humanoid robots by integrating NVIDIA technologies — including NVIDIA Jetson Thor, NVIDIA Isaac Sim, and NVIDIA Isaac Lab — into its technology stack. These tools have powered the HMND 01 Alpha robots, now successfully tested in real-world environments, including a recent proof-of-concept with Schaeffler.
Jetson Thor drives the alpha prototype of HMND 01 robots across two platforms: a wheeled system designed for industrial environments, and a recently released bipedal robot which is intended mainly for R&D for future service and household applications. It serves as an extremely powerful edge computer that allows Humanoid to run the latest, largest, and most capable robotic foundation models directly at the edge, bringing unprecedented intelligence to the robots. Jetson Thor significantly simplifies the robot's system architecture, wiring, manufacturability, and field service ability.
To accelerate development, Humanoid also follows a simulation-first approach using NVIDIA Isaac Lab and Isaac Sim, open-source frameworks for robot learning and simulation. For example, Isaac Lab powers reinforcement learning for improving locomotion and manipulation capabilities. The team also has developed custom hardware-in-the-loop validation with Isaac Sim, creating digital twins that use the same interfaces as the real robots. This allows engineers to seamlessly switch between simulated and physical robots when testing middleware, control systems, teleoperation, and full-body control. Isaac Sim is also used to validate navigation and manipulation policies long before the robot is deployed on site.
At the same time, simulation plays a critical role in hardware design. By analyzing forces, motion, and stability in the virtual environment, the team can optimize actuator selection, joint strength, mass distribution, and overall robot stability before building physical prototypes. This approach led to improvements in balance, durability, and performance across both wheeled and bipedal robots. As a result, Humanoid designed its first alpha prototypes in just 7 months, much faster than typical 18-24 month hardware cycles.
Moreover, for training Vision-Language-Action models, Humanoid uses NVIDIA AI Infrastructure, reducing post-training time to just a few hours.
The impact is tangible. Tasks that traditionally would take months and require large expert teams can now be achieved in a much shorter time. Today, Humanoid can train a policy from scratch and deploy it on a real robot within 24 hours.
NVIDIA’s open libraries and frameworks play an essential role in identifying and resolving potential issues early in development. Isaac Sim, the team validated navigation and SLAM performance, and analyzed stability and torque requirements. Humanoid optimized sensor and camera placement for reliable perception in real-world environments. For the bipedal robot, simulation was also used to evaluate 6 different leg configurations — it helped finalize hardware designs before physical testing and reduce potential risks.
This approach becomes increasingly important for safe and reliable deployment outside of controlled laboratory settings. As a commercially oriented company, Humanoid is focused on bringing robots into real operational environments early, gathering feedback, and iterating quickly. To date, Humanoid has already received 20,500 pre-orders, completed 6 proof-of-concepts, and has three additional pilots currently in progress.
“NVIDIA’s open robotics development platform helps the industry move past legacy industrial communication standards and make the most of modern networking capabilities. We’re currently working closely with NVIDIA and other partners on a new robotics networking system built on Jetson Thor and the Holoscan Sensor Bridge. We believe this co-developed open network standard for AI-enabled robots could make a big impact across the industry. Together, we can open the way for software-defined robots,” said Jarad Cannon, Chief Technology Officer at Humanoid.
Humanoid is a UK-based robotics innovation company dedicated to developing advanced humanoid robots that enhance human capabilities. Founded by Artem Sokolov in 2024, Humanoid brings together over 200 engineers, researchers, and innovators from top global tech companies. With offices in London, Boston, and Vancouver, the company is focused on building commercially viable, scalable, and safe robotic solutions for real-world applications.
