German robotics startup Neura Robotics on Tuesday revealed plans to build Europe’s largest training center for physical AI, at Munich Airport.
Dubbed the TUM RoboGym, the center is being designed in partnership with the Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MIRMI) at the Technical University of Munich (TUM).
The partners are jointly investing approximately $19 million in the project at launch, with Neura providing the majority, about $12 million. The center is expected to launch with about 26,000 square feet, with expansion planned in the near term, and operations slated to start later this year.
The center will house and train a fleet of humanoid robots, in what the partners say is a major milestone for scaling intelligent robotics and bolstering Europe’s standing in the global tech landscape.
“European sovereignty is extremely important in times of geopolitical competition between East and West,” Lorenzo Masia, director of the TUM RoboGym and executive director of TUM MIRMI, said in a release. “With this research and training center — one of the largest of its kind worldwide –we are creating a unique infrastructure in Europe for our researchers and students.”
Much of the data generated at the RoboGym will feed into the Neuraverse, Neura’s hardware-agnostic platform for robot training data.
The company says richer data will enable development of more precise AI models and capable robots, as well as a higher global standard for physical AI.
“For the advancement of intelligent robotics, the biggest challenge today is no longer the hardware, but access to high-quality, realistic training data,” David Reger, CEO and founder of Neura Robotics, said in the release.
The development came alongside Neura’s collaboration with Qualcomm, in which Neura will use the semiconductor giant‘s Dragonwing Robotics IQ10 processors as reference designs in its robots.
The companies said they aim to build the “brain and nervous system” of next-generation humanoid and general-purpose robots for both domestic and industrial settings. Financial terms were not disclosed.