The humanoid project "REEM"

Icarus Technology was created in 2004 by Pal Technology, an enterprise located in the United Arab Emirates. The role of project leader was assigned from the very beginning to Davide Faconti, a young researcher who created the first Italian team to participate in the RoboCup Humanoid League.

Their ambitious goal was to develop a full-sized humanoid robot from scratch in just one year.

The robot was intended to be autonomous in terms of power supply and computation and had to perform visually assisted grasping and dynamic biped walking. By 2004, only Japan and Korea had managed to build this kind of robot, and it was commonly believed that it was impossible to achieve comparable results in such a short amount of time.

Nevertheless, Davide Faconti constituted an intial team of engineers and they built the first prototype, later called REEM-A, in about 13 months.

The team continued growing and improved REEM-A's skill set; the robot, with its walking speed and stability greatly improved, became able to recognize faces, understand voice commands and recognize objects.

Eventually, a second prototype was officially presented in Abu Dhabi during a press conference in 2008.

REEM-B possessed all the skills of its predecessor, but it was superior in terms of battery autonomy and strength; in fact, it can still be considered one of the strongest biped humanoid robots in the world. REEM-B was also able to navigate independently and  avoid obstacles using laser based simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM).

Click here to see REEM-A in action

Click here to see REEM-B in action

Pal Robotics

After the successful presentation of REEM-B, the goal and commitment of the research team became to evolve the technology of the REEM series into a commercially viable platform. The whole team was moved to a new company, called Pal Robotics to better represent the brand of their sponsor, Pal Technology.

The REEM series was improved in terms of mechanical robustness, autonomy and price. For more information about the latest developments in the REEM project, please visit www.pal-robotics.com

A new beginning for Icarus Technology

Davide Faconti left Pal Robotics in December 2010 to restart Icarus Technology on his own with a new mission: to provide consulting and R&D services to clients dealing with the conceptual design and/or integration of complex robotic systems.

What has not change in the past seven years is the company's core value: "we like to take up challenges".