13:00 - 14:00 

Lunch

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14:00 - 14:45

From Chips to Joints: Semiconductor Innovation Enabling a New Era of Humanoid Actuators

Maurizio Incurvati (Infineon Technologies, Villach, AT)

Smart actuators are redefining humanoid robotics, unlocking human-like movement through unprecedented efficiency, precision, and compliance. Unlike industrial automation, humanoids operate in unstructured, dynamic environments demanding coordinated multi-joint control, real-time balance, and safe human interaction. The deep integration of GaN technology transforms motor drive performance, delivering superior power density, faster switching, and enhanced thermal management for compact actuator design. Fully integrated power, control, and sensing solutions — combining tactile, force, and position feedback — are particularly disruptive for dexterous hands. Real-time deterministic connectivity between actuators and central GPUs ensures seamless motion control. This tutorial explores how these converging semiconductor advances pioneer the next generation of intelligent, safe humanoid actuators.

 

14:45 - 15:30

Mechatronic Sensors for Robots: Force and Torque Sensors for Motion Control and Dexterous Manipulation

Gaël Close (Melexis Technologies SA, Bevaich, CH)

Mechatronic sensors are high-value differentiators in humanoid robots, requiring integrated solutions across chip design, mechanical systems, and software ecosystems. This talk focuses on force and torque sensors (scalar and 3D vectors) for joint control and dexterous manipulation. Through case studies, we explore contactless sensing modalities: inductive, capacitive, and magnetic, achieving accurate measurements while rejecting parasitic errors. We discuss chip and mechanics co-design principles. The talk concludes with an outlook on perception capabilities enabled by on-chip AI accelerators, unlocking significant value through integrated sensors and digital companion services such as physics models for simulation based reinforcement learning.

 

15:30 - 16:00 

Coffee break

 

16:00 - 16:45

Interfacing and Conversion of Robotic Sensor Signals

Pieter Harpe (Eindhoven University of Technology, NL)

Robotics cover a wide range of categories, including industrial robots, drones, humanoids, cobots, and neurorobotics. While they all need sensors to retrieve input from the environment, the vast application range implies an equally wide range of sensor solutions is needed. This presentation will start with an overview of sensors for robotics, and then focuses on the required circuits to capture and digitize the sensor information. Major challenges and practical solutions for different sensor interfaces are highlighted, including techniques to improve resolution, precision, dynamic range, and bandwidth. Besides showing classical approaches, some novel approaches for scaled technologies are also illustrated.

 

16:45 - 17:30 

Functional Safety Aspects of Robotics

Carolina Di Napoli (Infineon Technologies, Padova, IT)

As humanoid robots increasingly enter real-world environments, functional safety becomes a critical concern. This tutorial introduces functional safety in humanoid robotics, a field that presents new challenges compared with traditional industrial applications governed by the Machinery Regulation, from dynamic stability and balance control to new safe-state concepts. One illustrative case is the motor-control design for humanoid joints. Addressing it begins with a hazard and risk assessment to assign the required performance level, which then drives architectural and component choices. The design process concludes with safety analysis. The tutorial highlights the role of ISO 26262- and IEC 61508-compliant semiconductors in enabling functional safety, and explores levels of redundant architectures appropriate to the target safety functions and the environments in which the humanoid will operate