
FZI Research Center for Information Technology · legged machine
LAURON V
The fifth generation of FZI's LAURON hexapods, with four joints per leg and a gripper. Height is 61 cm normally and 84 cm with legs fully extended.
- Price
- $200,000Cheaper than 14%
- Height
- 84 cmTaller than 36%
- Weight
- 43.5 kgHeavier than 52%
- Payload
- —Not published
- Speed
- 0.5 km/hFaster than 11%
- Battery
- 2 hRuns longer than 33%
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Why it matters
A stick-insect-inspired hexapod able to run fully autonomous exploration missions using 3D mapping and path planning.
Real-world use
None (research)
Timeline
- First shown
- 2013
- Released
- Not yet
Maker
FZI Research Center for Information TechnologyGovernment lab · Karlsruhe, GermanyHow it stacks up
Against other legged & novel that publish the figure. Pick a measure.
LAURON V is taller than 36% of the 22 other legged & novel that publish a height. Bars show the 7 closest in date.
LAURON V is heavier than 52% of the 25 other legged & novel that publish a weight. Bars show the 7 closest in date.
LAURON V is faster than 11% of the 19 other legged & novel that publish a speed. Bars show the 7 closest in date.
LAURON V has more joints than 81% of the 16 other legged & novel that publish a joints. Bars show the 7 closest in date.
LAURON V runs longer than 33% of the 6 other legged & novel that publish a battery. Bars show the 6 closest in date.
LAURON V costs less than 14% of the 7 other legged & novel that publish a price. Bars show the 7 closest in date.
Not published by the maker: payload.
Public attention
How much public attention LAURON V gets, from open data.
- 299 views of its Wikipedia article in the last 90 days (LAURON)
- No recent press stories listed yet
Measures how much people read and write about a robot, not how good it is. Measured 2026-10-14; same method for every robot. How it is measured
What’s inside
The parts the company has talked about publicly.
- Movement
- Walks on legs · 28 joints
- How it runs
- Assisted. Its external control center could supply speed and gait commands while onboard behaviors coordinated its legs and adapted walking to unfamiliar terrain.
- Actuators & motors
- 28 motors: four joints per leg with Faulhaber brushed DC motors and planetary gearheads (66:1 and 159:1), chain and worm drives; brushless motors for gripper and laser scanner.
- Hands
- 1-DoF gripper on a front leg; legs also used for manipulation.
- Sensors & vision
- Two Asus Xtion Pro Live depth cameras, two Point Grey Firefly cameras, FLIR thermal camera, Velodyne HDL-32E or custom 3D laser scanner (Hokuyo UTM-30LX), Microstrain IMU, joint encoders and motor-current sensing.
- Compute
- Mini-ITX Intel Core i7 main computer, Intel NUC i7 vision computer, custom DSP/FPGA leg controllers, Arduino and Raspberry Pi helpers.
- Battery & power
- Two 24 V 8,000 mAh lithium-polymer packs, about 2 hours; hot-swappable.
- Materials & build
- Aerospace aluminium legs; POM, PE and 3D-printed PLA shell parts; brass worm gears.
- AI & software
- Ubuntu 14.04 with ROS Indigo for high-level control (PLEXNAV framework, OMPL, OpenCV, PCL, SMACH, 3D SLAM); MCA2 behaviour-based low-level control.
- Other details
- About 43.5 kg; 0.5 km/h. Leg design and gaits based on the stick insect. Earlier LAURONs date to 1994.
From the maker
LAURON V is the only machine from FZI Research Center for Information Technology in the atlas.
Made, sold and where
Unit counts are usually company figures; analysts often disagree.
- Price
- $200,000about EUR 150,000; USD converted at roughly 2013 rates
- How to get one
- No official buying page found
- Built
- Research robot
- Sold or delivered
- not sold; cost about €150,000
- Where it is sold or used
- FZI Research Center for Information Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany
- Customers and pilots
- None (research)
Sources
Figures come from press coverage. Every link below backs something on this page.
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