ALICE 4 Redefines Industrial Robotics With Gearless Precision and NVIDIA AI Integration

South Korean Innovation Enters the Arena

AeiRobot has unveiled ALICE 4, a 160-centimeter humanoid platform engineered to transform material handling and collaborative manufacturing through proprietary gearless linear actuators paired with NVIDIA's Jetson Orin NX computing architecture. Standing 45 kilograms and equipped with 41 degrees of freedom, the robot combines force-sensitive manipulation with natural language understanding to execute complex pick-and-place workflows autonomously. This represents a meaningful shift in how manufacturers approach flexible automation, moving beyond rigid task execution toward adaptive, context-aware industrial assistance.

Quiet Power Meets Precision Control

What distinguishes ALICE 4 from conventional industrial arms is its radical departure from traditional geared actuators. The robot's proprietary linear actuator design eliminates mechanical reducers entirely, delivering back-drivable force control that enables safe physical collaboration with human workers. This architecture produces minimal operational noise while maintaining the impedance control necessary for handling fragile objects, precision instruments, and delicate assembly tasks. The force-sensing resistor network grants the robot real-time awareness of contact forces, allowing it to adjust grip pressure and movement velocity based on object properties and environmental feedback.

Engineering Breakthroughs in Motion

The gearless actuator innovation addresses longstanding constraints in humanoid robotics: energy waste, thermal buildup, and imprecise force feedback. ALICE 4's parallel linear configuration maximizes energy efficiency while an integrated heatsink frame manages thermal dissipation during sustained operation. The robot's real-time field-oriented control system processes sensory input from force sensors, inertial measurement units, and depth cameras to maintain stable, natural movements even when navigating unpredictable factory environments. This multi-modal sensor fusion enables the robot to perceive spatial relationships, detect obstacles, and adapt movement trajectories without explicit programming for each scenario.

From Warehouses to Research Labs

ALICE 4 targets three distinct operational domains. In manufacturing, it automates sorting, material transfer, and assembly line support where human-safe collaboration matters. Research institutions leverage its modular design and ROS2-based software stack to prototype new AI behaviors and test embodied learning systems. Service applications including VR-based teleoperation allow remote operators to train the robot through demonstration, with imitation learning algorithms capturing skilled movements for autonomous replay. The robot's eight-hour battery runtime supports full-shift deployment in commercial facilities, while its 0.8 meters-per-second walking speed enables meaningful task completion within human-paced work environments.

Skill Architecture and Capability Summary

ALICE 4's technical foundation transforms raw specifications into interaction competencies. The 41-joint architecture enables dexterous hand manipulation (7 degrees of freedom per arm) combined with fluid torso and neck articulation, allowing the robot to position objects with millimeter accuracy while maintaining natural eye contact during collaborative tasks. Its sensor array—RGB cameras, stereo depth sensing, LiDAR, ultrasonic proximity detection, gyroscopes, and force sensors—creates comprehensive environmental awareness that supports both autonomous navigation through crowded spaces and precise manipulation of objects ranging from 5-10 kilograms per arm. The eight-hour battery life sustains continuous interaction sessions across manufacturing shifts, while the NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX processes vision-based object detection and natural language instructions in real-time, enabling the robot to respond to verbal commands like "sort these components by color" without pre-programmed workflows.

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