PAL Robotics Brand Guidelines: Barcelona’s 2004 Humanoid Maker of REEM, TALOS & TIAGo

Catalan and Italian engineers in Barcelona.

PAL Robotics was founded in Barcelona in 2004 by a team of Catalan and Italian engineers, according to Catalan Wikipedia, which cites a 2013 article in the engineering magazine Theknos. Its first project was a humanoid robot that could play chess, built at the request of a sheikh from the United Arab Emirates. After about a year the team had a first model, named REEM-A after an island near Abu Dhabi. By 2006, Catalan Wikipedia says, REEM-A could walk, play chess and recognise faces, objects and spoken commands.

The robot gave the young company its first public outings. In 2007 REEM-A took second place in the penalty-kick competition at RoboCup, the international robot football contest, and it was shown that year at Wired NextFest, where it walked among visitors. English Wikipedia describes REEM-A and REEM-B as PAL Robotics’ first and second humanoid prototypes. Catalan Wikipedia adds that the Institute of Robotics and Industrial Informatics, a centre set up by the Polytechnic University of Catalonia and the Spanish research council CSIC, has helped train the company’s staff and has taken part in some of its projects.

The company’s own account matches that start date. Its website says that since 2004 it has worked to bring robots into daily life, that its headquarters is in Barcelona with offices in Toulouse and Bari, and that its robots serve people in more than 30 countries. It also says its engineers debuted Europe’s first fully autonomous humanoid biped robot. In 2017 IEEE Spectrum named Francesco Ferro as PAL’s chief executive, and in 2024 the trade site Humanoid Robotics Technology quoted Luca Marchionni as its chief technology officer; both appear among the authors of PAL’s research papers on REEM, TIAGo and TALOS that Catalan Wikipedia lists.

From REEM-A to REEM-C.

The REEM name ran through several generations. REEM-B, of 2008, could lift and carry objects, Catalan Wikipedia says, and one of its less usual design features was a set of laser sensors in its feet that let it map its surroundings as it walked. In 2010 PAL presented REEM-H1, its first version meant for sale, which dropped legs for a wheeled base and was designed to move through shopping centres, airports and other public spaces, with a screen on its chest for talking to people. Catalan Wikipedia says none were sold.

The wheeled REEM of 2012 followed, with two arms, three-fingered hands and a screen in the middle of its torso; PAL tried it in shopping centres, hospitals and museums. In 2013 the company returned to legs with REEM-C, a 165-centimetre biped aimed at research groups. Catalan Wikipedia says that, unlike the A and B models, REEM-C was sold as a research platform, and that PAL also rented the robots to research centres to make them easier to reach. PAL’s website now keeps REEM-C in what it calls its Hall of Fame, describing it as its first humanoid conceived to lead to its later systems.

In 2015 the company moved toward service robotics with two modular machines. TIAGo, short for “Take It And Go,” is a mobile manipulator: a wheeled base, a torso and a head, with an optional seven-jointed arm, offered in several configurations including a two-armed version. StockBot, which shares TIAGo’s mobile base, was built to take stock in shops using radio-frequency identification tags and cameras. Both remain in PAL’s current range, alongside the ARI social robot and a TIAGo Pro family.

How humanoid makers present themselves.

Humanoid and legged-robot makers sell machines that most people have only seen on a screen, so video carries much of their identity. Boston Dynamics built a public following through clips of its robots: a 2017 video of the Spot quadruped opening a door for another robot reached the top of YouTube, “Parkour Atlas” followed in 2018, and in 2025 a troupe of robot dogs danced on America’s Got Talent, according to Wikipedia. When Hyundai Motor Group completed its purchase of the company in 2021, its announcement video showed Atlas dancing beside a child, The Robot Report noted.

The newer story is work. Makers now show their robots in factories and warehouses rather than in labs: Agility’s Digit handling totes for the logistics group GXO, and Boston Dynamics’ electric Atlas being trained to sequence car parts at a Hyundai plant in Georgia, as each company describes it. Press releases lean on customer names, pilot sites and hours of operation, and trade reporters such as The Robot Report and IEEE Spectrum follow those claims from launch to deployment.

Launches happen on stages built for that audience. Agility presented a redesigned Digit at ProMat, the material-handling show, in 2023, and Boston Dynamics unveiled its new Atlas at Hyundai’s media day at CES 2026, the companies say. Research conferences such as ICRA, the IEEE’s robotics and automation meeting, and the World Robot Conference in China play the same part for engineers and the trade.

Identities shift as the companies grow up. In March 2026 Agility Robotics became simply Agility, with a refreshed logo that the company said was inspired by the hardware and software it builds, The Robot Report reported. This guide sets out what can be checked about each company: who founded it, who owns it, where it builds its robots, and which claims rest only on its own word.

Two bipeds for research labs.

The next biped was TALOS. IEEE Spectrum reported on 7 March 2017 that PAL was offering it as an improvement on its REEM humanoids: a 1.75-metre, 100-kilogram robot with 32 degrees of freedom, designed for dynamic walking and heavy lifting. PAL’s chief executive told the magazine it was meant to “work on physically demanding and accurate tasks” in industrial settings, and the first unit was already at LAAS-CNRS, the French research laboratory in Toulouse. Catalan Wikipedia says that first robot was named Pyrène and used there in trials related to aircraft manufacturing.

A smaller biped, Kangaroo, came next. In April 2024 PAL said Kangaroo was joining PRIMI, a project funded by the European Union that studies neuromorphic computing in robots, where PAL’s work includes linking Kangaroo with ROS4HRI, a robot software framework for human-robot interaction, alongside the iCub robot. In August 2024 Humanoid Robotics Technology reported that Kangaroo had moved from prototype to a product on sale and that the first unit had been delivered to the Technical University of Vienna, TU Wien. PAL’s product page describes it as a platform for research on dynamic locomotion, reinforcement learning and embodied AI, built with custom linear actuators and electronics developed in-house.

Across twenty years, PAL’s robots have kept the same kind of customer. REEM-C, TIAGo, TALOS and Kangaroo were all presented as research platforms, and the company’s website says its robots are used in fields from industry and healthcare to retail and agrifood.

For a design guide, PAL Robotics shows a maker that names each robot generation as a family member and keeps its retired machines on show. Compare Boston Dynamics, another long-running legged-robot maker, and Universal Robots, the Danish maker of collaborative arms. For this guide we use a deep navy, a lab white and a terracotta with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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