Experts & key people
Who shapes humanoid robotics: 61 people from industry, research and AI — from the founders of the leading robot companies to the pioneers of robot foundation models. Profiles are currently detailed in German.
Founders & business leaders
30The people behind the robot companies — founders, CEOs and CTOs worldwide.
Aaron Saunders
🇺🇸 Ehem. CTO · Boston Dynamics
Alex Gu (Gu Jie)
🇨🇳 Gründer & CEO · Fourier
Amnon Shashua
🇮🇱 Mitgründer & Chairman · Mentee Robotics
Bernt Børnich
🇳🇴 Gründer & CEO · 1X Technologies
Brett Adcock
🇺🇸 Gründer & CEO · Figure AI
Cheng Hao
🇨🇳 Gründer & CEO · Booster Robotics
Daniel Friedmann
🇨🇦 CEO & Chairman · Sanctuary AI
David Reger
🇩🇪 Gründer & CEO · Neura Robotics
Deng Taihua
🇨🇳 Mitgründer, Chairman & CEO · AgiBot (Zhiyuan Robotics)
Elon Musk
🇺🇸 CEO · Tesla
Francesco Ferro
🇪🇸 Mitgründer & CEO · PAL Robotics
Gao Jiyang
🇨🇳 Gründer & CEO · Galaxea AI
Geordie Rose
🇨🇦 Mitgründer · Sanctuary AI
He Xiaopeng
🇨🇳 Vorstandsvorsitzender & CEO · XPeng
Hu Debo
🇨🇳 Gründer · Kepler (Kepler Exploration Robot)
Jeff Cardenas
🇺🇸 Mitgründer & CEO · Apptronik
Jonathan Hurst
🇺🇸 Mitgründer & Chief Robot Officer · Agility Robotics
Lachy Groom
🇺🇸 Mitgründer & CEO · Physical Intelligence
Lai Jie
🇨🇳 Gründer & CEO · Astribot (Stardust Intelligence)
Lei Jun
🇨🇳 Gründer & CEO · Xiaomi
Lior Wolf
🇮🇱 Mitgründer & CEO · Mentee Robotics
Olivia Norton
🇨🇦 Mitgründerin & CTO · Sanctuary AI
Peng Zhihui
🇨🇳 Mitgründer, President & CTO · AgiBot (Zhiyuan Robotics)
Pras Velagapudi
🇺🇸 CTO · Agility Robotics
Robert Playter
🇺🇸 Ehem. CEO · Boston Dynamics
Wang Xingxing
🇨🇳 Gründer & CEO · Unitree Robotics
Zhang Tao (Felix Zhang)
🇨🇳 Gründer & CEO · Pudu Robotics
Zhang Wei
🇨🇳 Mitgründer · LimX Dynamics
Zhao Tongyang
🇨🇳 Gründer & Chairman/CEO · EngineAI
Zhou Jian
🇨🇳 Gründer & CEO · UBTech Robotics
Research & academia
19Professors and lab leaders shaping locomotion, manipulation, control and humanoid hardware.
Alin Albu-Schäffer
🇩🇪 Direktor, Institut für Robotik und Mechatronik · DLR / TU München
Aude Billard
🇨🇭 Professorin & Leiterin LASA · EPFL
Auke Ijspeert
🇨🇭 Professor & Leiter Biorobotics Lab · EPFL
Cewu Lu
🇨🇳 Professor (Embodied Intelligence) · Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Christian Ott
🇦🇹 Professor für Robotik (ACIN) · TU Wien
Daniela Rus
🇺🇸 Direktorin, MIT CSAIL; Andrew & Erna Viterbi Professor, EECS · Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Dennis Hong
🇺🇸 Professor & Direktor RoMeLa · UCLA
Jitendra Malik
🇺🇸 Professor (EECS); Robotik-Initiative bei Amazon FAR · UC Berkeley / Amazon
Jun-Ho Oh
🇰🇷 Emeritierter Professor (KAIST); Leiter Future Robotics, Samsung · KAIST / Samsung Electronics
Ken Goldberg
🇺🇸 Distinguished Professor (IEOR/EECS) · UC Berkeley
Marc Raibert
🇺🇸 Gründer & Executive Director · RAI Institute (vormals Boston Dynamics AI Institute)
Marc Toussaint
🇩🇪 Professor für Learning & Intelligent Systems · TU Berlin
Marco Hutter
🇨🇭 Professor für Robotic Systems · ETH Zürich
Russ Tedrake
🇺🇸 Toyota Professor (EECS/CSAIL) · MIT
Sami Haddadin
🇩🇪 VP for Research & Professor of Robotics · MBZUAI (Abu Dhabi)
Sangbae Kim
🇺🇸 Robotics Architect (Meta); beurlaubter MIT-Professor · Meta Reality Labs / MIT
Shuran Song
🇺🇸 Assistant Professor & Leiterin REAL Lab · Stanford University
Tamim Asfour
🇩🇪 Professor für Humanoide Robotik (H²T) · Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT)
Xiaolong Wang
🇺🇸 Associate Professor (ECE) · UC San Diego
AI, Embodied AI & foundation models
12The pioneers of learning-based robotics — vision-language-action models, world models and robot foundation models.
Abhinav Gupta
🇺🇸 Associate Professor & Mitgründer/President Skild AI · Carnegie Mellon University / Skild AI
Animesh Garg
🇺🇸 Assistant Professor & Senior Researcher NVIDIA · Georgia Tech / NVIDIA
Carolina Parada
🇺🇸 Head of Robotics · Google DeepMind
Chelsea Finn
🇺🇸 Assistant Professor & Mitgründerin Physical Intelligence · Stanford University / Physical Intelligence
Deepak Pathak
🇺🇸 Associate Professor & Mitgründer/CEO Skild AI · Carnegie Mellon University / Skild AI
Fei-Fei Li
🇺🇸 Professorin (CS), Co-Direktorin Stanford HAI & CEO World Labs · Stanford University / World Labs
Jim Fan
🇺🇸 Director of AI & Co-Lead GEAR Lab · NVIDIA
Karol Hausman
🇺🇸 Mitgründer & CEO · Physical Intelligence
Pieter Abbeel
🇺🇸 Professor (EECS) · UC Berkeley
Sergey Levine
🇺🇸 Professor (EECS) & Mitgründer Physical Intelligence · UC Berkeley / Physical Intelligence
Vincent Vanhoucke
🇺🇸 Distinguished Engineer · Waymo
Yuke Zhu
🇺🇸 Associate Professor (CS) & NVIDIA GEAR Co-Lead · UT Austin / NVIDIA