PAL Robotics TALOS

Positioning and availability

PAL Robotics TALOS is an advanced humanoid research robot developed by Barcelona-based PAL Robotics, available since 2017. It is one of the most important European humanoid robotics platforms, equipped with full joint torque control. The robot is intended exclusively for research and industrial institutions — available on a quote-only basis. Users include LAAS-CNRS, DLR, Airbus and numerous European universities.

Mechanical structure

TALOS stands 175 cm tall and weighs 95 kg. It features 32 degrees of freedom: 6 per leg (12 total), 7 per arm (14 total), 2 at the waist and 2 in the head. Arm payload is 6 kg with the arm fully extended. Grippers and the head are fully configurable per customer requirements. Battery runtime is approximately 1.5 h walking or 3 h standby.

Actuation and torque control

All joints are driven by brushless electric motors (PMSM). The defining feature of TALOS is full torque control: every joint (except the head, wrists and grippers) is equipped with a joint torque sensor. Internal communication uses EtherCAT, supporting control loops at 2 kHz and up to 5 kHz. Six-axis force/torque (F/T) sensors are mounted at both wrists and both ankles. Absolute encoders provide joint position feedback.

Perception and computing

TALOS is equipped with a LiDAR on the robot base for terrain mapping and localisation during locomotion. The head is configurable and can accommodate RGB, depth or stereo cameras per customer requirements. Temperature sensors in all joints monitor motor thermal status. The compute platform runs Ubuntu LTS with a Real-Time OS; an EtherCAT master PC supervises real-time communication. Detailed compute specifications are not publicly disclosed by the manufacturer.

Software and ecosystem

TALOS is fully integrated with ROS — supporting both ROS 1 Noetic and ROS 2 Humble (official talos_robot repository on GitHub). Control is implemented via ros2_control with a custom hardware interface. PAL Robotics offers premium software modules: Whole-Body Control (WBC), navigation, teleoperation and HRI. The URDF model is available at wiki.ros.org/Robots/TALOS. External research packages: stack-of-tasks (LAAS-CNRS), talos-torque-control, MEMMO, TSID.

Research applications

TALOS serves as a reference platform for research in dynamic bipedal locomotion, whole-body control (WBC), multi-contact motion planning and human-robot interaction. The robot has successfully demonstrated stair climbing, locomotion on uneven terrain, bimanual manipulation and industrial tasks simulated by Airbus (assembly in the "Factory of the Future").