The Apptronik Apollo SDK is the developer kit for the Apollo humanoid — a general-purpose robot 173 cm tall, ~73 kg, with two grippers and 25+ degrees of freedom. Apollo is designed as a 'general purpose humanoid' for factory work (a Mercedes-Benz pilot since March 2024 in Berlin/Sindelfingen), warehouses (GXO Logistics, partnership announced in 2024), and eventually homes. Apptronik traces its lineage to UT Austin's Human Centered Robotics Lab (Prof. Luis Sentis) and NASA's Valkyrie heritage.
The SDK (private beta for Developer Program partners, accessible since Q3 2024) is based on **skill-based programming**: instead of writing low-level trajectories, the developer composes high-level skills (`pick`, `place`, `carry`, `walk_to`, `inspect`, `handover`) using natural language commands or a Python API. Skills are taught through a combination of imitation learning (VR-rig teleoperation — Meta Quest 3) and RL fine-tuning in a simulator (Apptronik Sim built on NVIDIA Isaac Sim + MuJoCo). In March 2025, Apptronik announced a partnership with Google DeepMind to integrate **Gemini Robotics** (a multimodal VLA foundation model) as Apollo's 'brain' — an RT-X-class model for cross-embodiment generalization.
Technical stack: onboard compute consists of two NVIDIA Jetson AGX Thor units (Q4 2025+, previously Orin), real-time control loop at 1 kHz on FPGA + Linux PREEMPT_RT. Communication network: EtherCAT between servo modules (Apptronik's own 'Apollo Drives' with harmonic-drive reducers), gigabit Ethernet to compute, WiFi 6E + 5G to cloud. The SDK supports ROS 2 Humble as a secondary API; the primary path is native gRPC + Protobuf. **Apollo OS** is a proprietary RTOS based on Linux + ROS 2 with Apptronik patches.
Funding: $350M Series A (February 2025) with Google, B Capital, Capital Factory participation. Valuation ~$1.6B. Apollo is not yet publicly available — sales go through the Developer Program (NDA-based) and RaaS for selected partners.
An SDK (Software Development Kit) is a curated set of libraries, interfaces, tools, sample code, and documentation intended for building applications and integrating with a specific hardware device, platform, or service. In robotics, an SDK typically exposes device control, telemetry, sensor access, configuration, and execution functions, significantly reducing the time-to-first-integration for developers targeting a specific robot or platform.
An API Library is a software package that exposes programmatic interfaces for communicating with a device, service, or system. In robotics it typically forms a lightweight integration layer built on top of the manufacturer's official API or an open-source project, abstracting low-level protocol details and providing language-native bindings (Python, C++, Java, etc.).
Fleet Management software encompasses tools designed for managing a fleet of robots: task allocation and scheduling, status monitoring, over-the-air (OTA) firmware and software updates, error handling, and multi-unit coordination. It provides a centralised operations layer above individual robot controllers and is critical in warehouse automation, last-mile delivery, and industrial inspection deployments.
Robot Control denotes the role of software responsible for motion control, command execution, coordination of actuating elements and the direct operational logic of the robot.
Device Integration denotes the role of software responsible for communication, configuration, initialization and handling of specific devices, sensors, controllers or hardware components within a robotic system.
A family of official SDKs and APIs provided by robot manufacturers: Boston Dynamics (Spot SDK), ABB (RobotStudio), KUKA (RSI / KUKA Sunrise), Universal Robots (URCap / RTDE), Agility Robotics (Digit SDK), Apptronik (Apollo SDK).
Mercedes-Benz (since March 2024 — pilot in assembly plants in Berlin-Marienfelde and Sindelfingen — moving totes, delivering parts). GXO Logistics (Q3 2024 — warehouse pilot). NASA Johnson Space Center (Valkyrie heritage — testing in an ISS-like environment). B Capital portfolio companies. Capital Factory ecosystem (Austin, Texas). The first commercial Apollo series is planned for the second half of 2025.
Developer Program in private beta — estimated ~30–50 partners (primarily automotive + logistics). No public forum. Apptronik actively publishes papers on arXiv (Cassie/Valkyrie heritage). YouTube 'Apptronik' ~45k subscribers. Twitter/X @apptronik ~25k followers.
Access only via the Apptronik Developer Program (NDA + partner agreement). Apollo is not publicly sold in 2025-2026. Requires Ubuntu 22.04 with a PREEMPT_RT kernel.
License family: Proprietary – Commercial
Partnership with Google DeepMind announced — Gemini Robotics as Apollo's 'brain', a multimodal VLA model.
$350M Series A with Google participation. SDK 2.0 with native support for skill libraries and natural-language programming.
Integration with RT-X foundation models (collaboration with DeepMind Open X-Embodiment).
First SDK release for selected partners. JSON-RPC API + Python client + Apptronik Sim (Isaac Sim).
Start of trials at the Mercedes-Benz Sindelfingen and Berlin-Marienfelde factories.
First public unveiling of the Apollo humanoid (Apptronik + Mercedes-Benz announcement).
