Duatic launches Alpha, a wheeled half-humanoid for industrial manipulation

Duatic AG is a Swiss robotics company founded in 2024 as a spin-off from ETH Zurich research, building human-scale robotic manipulation systems for warehouse and industrial automation. Its two products are DynaArm, a lightweight robotic arm, and Alpha, a wheeled half-humanoid combining a mobile platform with dual-arm upper body manipulation.

The technology

Duatic's core technical approach is quasi-direct drive actuation, derived from ETH Zurich research, which uses low gear ratios to achieve inherent backdrivability and compliant contact without requiring separate force-torque sensors. The compliance is not a software feature layered on top of rigid actuators; it is a physical property of the drivetrain. A robot that naturally yields to external forces can share workspace with people and interact with objects it has not been pre-programmed to handle, which is the practical condition most warehouse and factory environments impose.

DynaArm weighs 9 kilograms with a 1.1-metre reach, a 12.5-kilogram payload capacity, and end-effector speeds of up to 10 metres per second. Festo's BionicMobileAssistant uses DynaDrives, Duatic's proprietary actuators, as does Ballbot, a balancing wheeled robot platform developed separately at ETH Zurich. The Festo deployment is the most significant external validation publicly available; Festo is one of the world's largest pneumatic and automation technology companies, and integrating Duatic's actuators into a commercial-grade demonstrator is a different signal from a lab prototype.

The robot

Alpha is a wheeled half-humanoid with a strong mobile base supporting payloads up to 200 kilograms and dual DynaArms each capable of 6 kilograms continuously and 12 kilograms in short bursts. The platform uses vision-based navigation for autonomous path planning and obstacle avoidance and runs on hot-swappable batteries for near-continuous operation. The structure is IP-rated for water resistance, targeting deployment in industrial environments where standard robots would require protection enclosures.

The design choice is worth noting directly. The wheeled base sidesteps the locomotion problem entirely; it provides stability, payload capacity, and reliability that legged platforms at comparable cost cannot match. The upper body delivers the dexterous manipulation that mobile robots without arms cannot. The result is a narrower engineering problem than full humanoid development, aimed at the specific industrial use case where mobility and arm-level dexterity are both required but walking is not.

Maturity

Duatic describes itself as a small startup targeting industrial partnerships and accelerated growth within Europe and internationally. Funding details have not been publicly disclosed. DynaArm is deployed in Festo's BionicMobileAssistant. Alpha has been publicly demonstrated with autonomous manipulation tasks including grasping a 20-kilogram bag using vision and dual arms. No named customer deployments, production volumes, or pricing for Alpha have been disclosed.

Have a robotics update Korthos should review? Send news, deployments, product releases, funding rounds, research, or media to tips@korthos.xyz or reach out on X at @agkorthos.