IHMC Alex

Alex is a research humanoid from IHMC, the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition in Pensacola, and the successor to its Nadia robot. Funded by the US Office of Naval Research, it is meant to leave the lab and work outdoors in urban terrain, in disaster response and on military tasks.

History and launch

IHMC introduced Alex in November 2025 as the next step after Nadia, the humanoid known for videos of it playing ping-pong and boxing. Nadia was mainly a lab testbed for joints, actuators, behavior software, perception and VR teleoperation; Alex is intended to operate in real environments.

The public got a first look at IHMC's open house on April 10, 2026. IHMC later reported Alex's first off-site demonstration without a tether.

Design and hardware

The key change from Nadia is a set of custom high-power electric actuators. IHMC estimates Alex's mass at about 85 kg with battery, compared with roughly 100 kg for Nadia, and plans a lighter body over time so the robot can approach human movement speeds.

The US Army's xTechHumanoid winners announcement describes Alex as having impact-resilient actuators, ballistic protection and hybrid autonomy that blends AI with human control. IHMC has not published a full spec sheet, including height or joint count.

A note on media mix-ups: Boardwalk Robotics, an IHMC spin-off, sells a different robot also named Alex, a legless humanoid upper body. Some articles blend the specs of the two.

Software and AI

The ONR program covers new controllers for outdoor urban operations, behavior design for building exploration, a behavior cloning pipeline and an improved simulation environment. In September 2026 the IHMC team posted an arXiv paper on fast, resilient loco-manipulation behaviors demonstrated on Alex and the Unitree H1-2, including door traversal and sorting balls by color under human disturbance.

Applications and deployments

Alex is a research platform, not a product. The long-term goal is a robot that can act as an avatar for first responders and service members in dangerous places. In September 2026 the US Army named IHMC one of five winners of its xTechHumanoid competition after demonstrations at Marine Corps Base Quantico. The award does not mean the Army has bought or fielded the robot.

Manufacturer

IHMC is an independent not-for-profit research institute in Florida. Its robotics team is led by Senior Research Scientist Dr. Robert Griffin. Alex is a multi-year, multimillion-dollar ONR-funded project.

Timeline

• 2025-11 IHMC unveils Alex, the successor to Nadia
• 2026-04 Public showing at the IHMC open house
• 2026-05 First off-site, off-tether demonstration
• 2026-09 arXiv paper on loco-manipulation behaviors tested on Alex
• 2026-09 IHMC named one of five US Army xTechHumanoid winners

Sources

1. Meet Alex: IHMC's next-generation humanoid robot, IHMC (2025-11-19)
2. Robotics competition winners advance military exploration of humanoid capabilities, U.S. Army (2026-09-30)
3. Meet 'Alex': A Disaster-Response Humanoid Challenging China's Robotics Rise, eWeek (2026-04-09)
4. A System for Fast, Resilient, and Adaptable Loco-Manipulation Behaviors on Humanoid Robots, arXiv (2026-09-01)

Updated: 2026-10-10

Compared with the catalogue

• Its weight of 85 kg (catalogue median: 65 kg) matters for transport and for working around people.
• It is the only IHMC model in the catalogue and one of 43 humanoids from USA.

Capabilities