IIT iCub

The iCub is a child-sized research humanoid created through the European RobotCub project and maintained by the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) in Genoa. The project publicly described the planned iCub at its July 2005 open day, and the platform subsequently evolved through several hardware versions. IIT describes it as a research-grade robot for developing and testing embodied-AI algorithms.

The current IIT technical specification gives a height of about 105 cm and a mass of 33 kg with the 3 kg battery backpack. The full robot has 53 degrees of freedom, including nine in each tendon-driven five-finger hand. It also has cameras, microphones, inertial sensors, force-torque sensing and more than 3,000 capacitive tactile points. An onboard Intel Core i7 computer runs Ubuntu and YARP, with a ROS interface.

IIT makes complete iCubs and partial configurations available to laboratories for a fee. Its undated catalogue gives an indicative build cost of EUR 250,000 for a full robot, EUR 200,000 for an upper body and EUR 40,000 for a head. Earlier iCub 1.x units were lighter and tethered; the larger iCub3 is a separate later development measuring 125 cm and 52 kg.