PAL Robotics TALOS

TALOS is a biped research humanoid from Barcelona's PAL Robotics, fully torque-controlled thanks to torque sensors in almost every joint. It stands 175 cm tall, lifts 6 kg per fully extended arm and is used by labs to study walking, whole-body control and work with industrial tools.

History and launch

PAL Robotics announced TALOS in March 2017 as an upgrade on its earlier REEM humanoids. It was developed with France's LAAS-CNRS in Toulouse, which received the first unit and named it Pyrène.

At launch IEEE Spectrum put the price at around one million euro. The aim was heavy, precise work in harsh industrial settings, starting as a research platform and eventually moving to tasks such as search and rescue.

Design and hardware

PAL lists TALOS at 175 cm and 95 kg, with 6 kg of payload per fully stretched arm because it was designed to use heavy industrial tools. The battery lasts about 1.5 hours of walking or 3 hours on standby. IEEE Spectrum's 2017 report gave 100 kg, 32 degrees of freedom (6 per leg, 7 per arm, 1 per hand, 2 in the neck, 2 in the waist) and a walking speed of 3 km/h.

Its defining feature is full torque control: torque sensors sit in every joint except the head, wrists and grippers, alongside force-torque sensors at the wrists and ankles, an IMU and temperature sensors. An EtherCAT network runs control loops at 2 kHz and up to 5 kHz. Head and grippers can be customized.

Software and AI

TALOS runs Ubuntu LTS with a real-time OS and is fully ROS-based. PAL's whole-body controller, written in ros_control, solves prioritized stacks of tasks and constraints. PAL ships state estimation from IMU and kinematics and a URDF model with masses and inertia tensors, and the simulation model is public on the ROS wiki.

Many research papers use the platform, including LAAS-CNRS work on optimization-based torque control and a benchmark of whole-body controllers on flat ground, uneven terrain and stairs.

Applications and deployments

TALOS is used mainly as a research platform in labs worldwide. PAL has written about work with French partners on torque-controlled walking in unknown terrain and about preparing the robot for tasks at Airbus as part of the EU MEMMO project.

Manufacturer

PAL Robotics is a Barcelona company whose history goes back to 2004 and the REEM-A humanoid. Besides TALOS it builds TIAGo, ARI and the Kangaroo biped.

Price and availability

TALOS is sold by PAL with quotes on request. At its 2017 launch the price was reported at around one million euro.

Timeline

• 2017-03 PAL Robotics announces TALOS; first unit (Pyrène) goes to LAAS-CNRS
• 2020 LAAS-CNRS publishes torque control research on TALOS
• 2022 Whole-body controller benchmark on TALOS in Frontiers in Robotics and AI

Sources

1. TALOS, PAL Robotics (2025)
2. TALOS humanoid now available from PAL Robotics, IEEE Spectrum (2017-03-07)
3. Benchmarking Whole-Body Controllers on the TALOS Humanoid Robot, Frontiers in Robotics and AI (2022)
4. Hardware design (Gepetto team), LAAS-CNRS (2025)
5. Ramuzat et al., European Control Conference 2020 (TALOS torque control), LAAS-CNRS (2020)

Updated: 2026-10-10

Compared with the catalogue

• At 175 cm the PAL Robotics TALOS is taller than 68% of the humanoids in the catalogue (median: 170 cm).
• Its weight of 100 kg (catalogue median: 65 kg) matters for transport and for working around people.
• It is one of 4 PAL Robotics models in the catalogue and one of 4 humanoids from Spain.

Capabilities