Intelligent Systems
Note: This research group has relocated.

Group News

Robot dog learns to walk in one hour

  • 18 July 2022

Virtual spinal cord is continuously optimized

Like a newborn animal, a four-legged robot stumbles around during its first walking attempts. But while a foal or a giraffe needs much longer to master walking, the robot learns to move forward fluently in just one hour. A computer program acts as the artificial presentation of the animal’s spinal cord, and learns to optimize the robot's movement in a short time. The artificial neural network is not yet ideally adjusted at the beginning, but rapidly self-adjusts. On July 18, the research work which is at the intersection of robotics and biology was published in the renowned journal Nature Machine Intelligence.

Felix Ruppert Alexander Badri-Sprowitz


Learning plastic matching

  • 18 July 2022

Learning plastic matching of robot dynamics in closed loop Central Pattern Generators at Nature Machine Intelligence

Felix Ruppert Alexander Badri-Sprowitz


Felix Ruppert defends his PhD research

  • 06 May 2022

Felix very successfully defended his PhD research.

Felix Ruppert


Emre Cemal Goenen joins DLG

  • 31 March 2022

We welcome Emre Cemal Goenen as new PhD candidate researcher at DLG.

Emre Cemal Goenen


BirdBot is energy-efficient thanks to nature as a model

  • 16 March 2022

A team of scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and the University of California, Irvine constructed a robot leg that, like its natural model, is very energy efficient. BirdBot benefits from a foot-leg coupling through a network of muscles and tendons that extends across multiple joints. In this way, BirdBot needs fewer motors than previous legged robots and could, theoretically, scale to large size. On March 16th, the researchers will publish their work in Science Robotics.

Alexander Badri-Sprowitz Alborz Aghamaleki Sarvestani Metin Sitti


Abhishek Chatterjee joins DLG

  • 01 March 2022

Abhishek Chatterjee joins as postdoc researcher. Welcome at DLG!


Oezge Drama Ph.D. defense

  • 06 May 2021

Oezge defends her Ph.D.

Ph.D. defense.

Oezge Drama


Bernadett Kiss joins DLG

  • 15 March 2021

New group member

Bernadett Kiss becomes new Dynamic Locomotion Group member.

Bernadett Kiss


Four-legged robot makes research comparable worldwide

  • 16 June 2020

Solo 8 is a new research robot, developed as an open-source project in the German cities of Tübingen and Stuttgart. The dog-resembling, torque-controlled quadruped is capable of very dynamic movements. It is made entirely of 3D printed parts and off-the-shelf components, which makes it an easy to replicate platform ideal for fundamental research in legged locomotion and robotic education. The project aims to provide robotic research labs around the world with an easy-to-assemble legged robot kit that doesn’t break the bank. Additionally, software on Solo 8 is constantly improved and publicly available on GitHub. In return, the scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems hope to exchange insights with other teams. Running experiments on the same platform creates comparative data – an ideal foundation for rapid progress in the research field of robotics.

Felix Grimminger Avadesh Meduri Majid Khadiv Manuel Wüthrich Maximilien Naveau Vincent Berenz Steve Heim Felix Widmaier / Kloss Jonathan Fiene Alexander Badri-Sprowitz Ludovic Righetti


MPI for Intelligent Systems continues video series

  • 29 April 2020

Video No 4 is now available

Short films present scientists' research projects in an understandable way

Alejandro Posada Georg Martius Alexander Badri-Sprowitz Andreas Geiger Sebastian Trimpe