Humanoid robots that perform complex tasks in households, care facilities, or industry while learning from humans and their own experience: this is what Tamim Asfour has been researching for over 25 years. Together with his team at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), he has developed the ARMAR family of humanoid robots, spanning from ARMAR-I, one of Europe’s first humanoid robots, to today's ARMAR-7 – developing both their physical bodies and their intelligence. The engineer and computer scientist is internationally recognised as one of the leading figures in robotics and embodied Artificial Intelligence. In recognition of his research achievements in the field of humanoid robotics, the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina is now awarding Tamim Asfour the 2026 Greve Prize. The prize, which is endowed with 250,000 euros, is donated by the Helmut and Hannelore Greve Foundation for Science, Development and Culture.
"Tamim Asfour’s research impressively demonstrates how concrete future technologies emerge from top-level interdisciplinary research," says Leopoldina President Bettina Rockenbach. "His approach combines mechatronics, computer science, perception, learning, and artificial intelligence into integrated systems, opening up new perspectives for the use of humanoid robots in everyday life and the working world."
Humanoid robots can attract attention through spectacular movements such as somersaults or flips. Tamim Asfour’s research addresses a far more challenging question: how can robots grasp and manipulate objects in real-world environments, perform complex tasks, and learn from humans and their own experience? To achieve this, Asfour develops cognitive humanoid robots as holistic hardware and software systems that integrate perception, motion control, action planning, learning, and interaction. In experiments, ARMAR-III and ARMAR-7 support people with domestic tasks, while ARMAR-6 assists with maintenance and repair work.
His work follows the approach of embodied Artificial Intelligence. For robot systems to one day work independently in households, hospitals, care facilities, or industrial environments, they require a body that interacts with the world, as well as an intelligence that learns from this interaction. Asfour developed a cognitive robot architecture featuring an episodic memory, which enables robots to store, retrieve, and describe experiences in natural language. For instance, ARMAR-7 can answer the question of what it saw in the kitchen that morning, describing objects, actions, and events from its own experience. This is considered a milestone in fundamental research on the path towards truly cognitive robots with embodied intelligence that learn incrementally through interaction.
Furthermore, Asfour has created widely used, freely accessible research infrastructures, most notably the KIT Whole-Body Human Motion Database, one of the world’s largest collections of data on human full-body movements.
Tamim Asfour studied electrical engineering and earned a doctorate in computer science at the University of Karlsruhe (now: Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, or KIT). He has served as an Adjunct Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) in the USA and at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Since 2012, he has been Professor of "Humanoid Robotic Systems" at the Institute for Anthropomatics and Robotics (IAR) at the KIT Faculty of Informatics. There, he holds the Chair of High Performance Humanoid Technologies (H²T). He is also the spokesperson for the Robotics Institute Germany.
The Greve Prize of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina is awarded to scientists or research teams working at German universities, non-university research institutes, or commercial enterprises. The award is presented every two years and recognises particularly outstanding research achievements in the fields of natural sciences/medicine and engineering sciences. The Greve Prize, on each occasion, focuses on a specific topic. This year, the topic is "Robotics and Embodied Intelligence". The prize is endowed with 250,000 euros, funded by the Greve Foundation. Further information on the Greve Prize can be found at: https://www.leopoldina.org/en/tasks/honouring-excellence/greve-prize
The award ceremony will take place on Friday, 27 November 2026 at 11 am as part of a formal ceremony to which the President of the Senate of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, First Mayor Peter Tschentscher, invites guests to Hamburg City Hall. Journalists interested in attending the award ceremony are requested to contact presse@leopoldina.org via email by 6 November. Interviews with the laureate will gladly be arranged.
The event will be livestreamed on the Leopoldina’s YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/NationaleAkademiederWissenschaftenLeopoldina.
About the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina
As the German National Academy of Sciences, the Leopoldina provides independent science-based policy advice on matters relevant to society. To this end, the Academy develops interdisciplinary statements based on scientific findings. In these publications, options for action are outlined; making decisions, however, is the responsibility of democratically legitimized politicians. The experts who prepare the statements work in a voluntary and unbiased manner. The Leopoldina represents the German scientific community in the international academy dialogue. This includes advising the annual summits of Heads of State and Government of the G7 and G20 countries. With around 1,700 members from more than 30 countries, the Leopoldina combines expertise from almost all research areas. Founded in 1652, it was appointed the National Academy of Sciences of Germany in 2008. The Leopoldina is committed to the common good.
About the Helmut and Hannelore Greve Foundation for Science, Development and Culture
Prof. Dr. h. c. Helmut Greve and Prof. Dr. h. c. Hannelore Greve founded the Helmut and Hannelore Greve Foundation for Science, Development and Culture in 1995. In the area of science, the foundation provided start-up capital spread over three years to establish the Academy of Sciences in Hamburg, the creation of the highly endowed Hamburg Science Prize, and since 2022 the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina’s Greve Prize. The highly conscientious approach of the foundation’s founders, their keen sense for quality, and their insight into what is necessary and what is possible shape the foundation’s work to this day. Directors Eva-Maria Greve and Wolfgang Peter Greve continue to guide the foundation according to these principles. |