Nvidia makes a Munich humanoid its reference platform
At GTC Berlin, Nvidia and Agile Robots presented a pre-configured research robot, extending Nvidia's software standard for robotics.
On 21 October at GTC Berlin, Nvidia presented the Agile ONE SN from Munich-based Agile Robots as the reference humanoid for its Isaac robotics platform. According to Reuters, Agile Robots plans to build up to 2,000 of these small humanoids in 2027, with deliveries due to start early that year.
What happened
The robot itself is not an industrial machine: 1.40 metres tall, about 40 kilograms, up to 3 kilograms of payload per arm. It is aimed at universities and research labs. The manufacturer says Stanford and ETH Zurich have expressed interest; no orders are confirmed. What matters is the package: Nvidia's Jetson Thor onboard computer, the open GR00T robot model and an end-to-end toolchain from data capture to deployment come pre-installed. Nvidia puts the saving for researchers at two to three months of integration work.
Alongside it, Nvidia announced an open runtime for robots, version 3.0 of its Isaac Lab training environment and a safety platform. The partner list reads like a directory of Europe's automation industry: ABB, KUKA, Universal Robots, NEURA Robotics, Sereact, Schaeffler as a supplier of drive technology and TÜV SÜD for certification. Robot skills are increasingly trained inside Nvidia's environment. Agile Robots was founded in 2018 as a spin-off of the German Aerospace Center and says it employs more than 3,500 people.
What follows
The logic echoes the data centre: whoever supplies the development environment in which researchers and engineers learn to work shapes later purchasing decisions. If Nvidia succeeds in robotics, value shifts from mechanics to compute, model and training data. For German machine builders, hardware expertise remains necessary but loses pricing power if a robot's intelligence comes from someone else's ecosystem. At the same time, entry costs fall for mid-sized firms that want to trial automation. How quickly research platforms turn into productive use in factories and warehouses is uncertain. Reliable deployment figures for humanoids beyond pilot projects are still scarce.
What to watch
- Actual unit numbers and first confirmed customers for the Agile ONE SN in the first half of 2027
- Whether European suppliers such as NEURA or RobCo keep their own software platforms or adopt Nvidia models
- First certifications of humanoid robots for industrial use, for example by TÜV SÜD
Sources
- NVIDIA: Advances Isaac Platform for General-Purpose Robotics (GTC Berlin)
- Agile Robots: Agile Robots Launches Agile ONE SN
- Reuters: Germany's Agile to make up to 2,000 humanoid robots with Nvidia