# NICOL: A Neuro-inspired Collaborative Semi-humanoid Robot that Bridges Social Interaction and Reliable Manipulation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.08528 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.08528/

## Key facts

- Cited by 15 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 15 May 2023.

## Built on by (most cited first, 15 of 15)

- [Large Language Models for Orchestrating Bimanual Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.02018/) (2024)
- [Inverse Kinematics for Neuro-Robotic Grasping with Humanoid Embodied Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.08825/) (2024)
- [LLM+MAP: Bimanual Robot Task Planning using Large Language Models and Planning Domain Definition Language](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.17309/) (2025)
- [CycleIK: Neuro-inspired Inverse Kinematics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.11554/) (2023)
- [Robots Can Multitask Too: Integrating a Memory Architecture and LLMs for Enhanced Cross-Task Robot Action Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.13505/) (2024)
- [Diffusing in Someone Else's Shoes: Robotic Perspective Taking with Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.07735/) (2024)
- [Comparing Apples to Oranges: LLM-powered Multimodal Intention Prediction in an Object Categorization Task](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.08424/) (2024)
- [Robotic Imitation of Human Actions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.08381/) (2024)
- [Pointing-Guided Target Estimation via Transformer-Based Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.05031/) (2025)
- [Clarifying the Half Full or Half Empty Question: Multimodal Container Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.08471/) (2023)
- [Shaken, Not Stirred: A Novel Dataset for Visual Understanding of Glasses in Human-Robot Bartending Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.04308/) (2025)
- [Keypoint-based Diffusion for Robotic Motion Planning on the NICOL Robot](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.04076/) (2025)
- [Theory of Mind for Explainable Human-Robot Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.23482/) (2025)
- [Prompt-to-Gesture: Measuring the Capabilities of Image-to-Video Deictic Gesture Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.14953/) (2026)
- [Towards VLA-Dreamer: Refining VLA Behavior Using World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.31313/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Robotic platforms that can efficiently collaborate with humans in physical tasks constitute a major goal in robotics. However, many existing robotic platforms are either designed for social interaction or industrial object manipulation tasks. The design of collaborative robots seldom emphasizes both their social interaction and physical collaboration abilities. To bridge this gap, we present the novel semi-humanoid NICOL, the Neuro-Inspired COLlaborator. NICOL is a large, newly designed, scaled-up version of its well-evaluated predecessor, the Neuro-Inspired COmpanion (NICO). NICOL adopts NICO's head and facial expression display and extends its manipulation abilities in terms of precision, object size, and workspace size. Our contribution in this paper is twofold -- firstly, we introduce the design concept for NICOL, and secondly, we provide an evaluation of NICOL's manipulation abilities by presenting a novel extension for an end-to-end hybrid neuro-genetic visuomotor learning approach adapted to NICOL's more complex kinematics. We show that the approach outperforms the state-of-the-art Inverse Kinematics (IK) solvers KDL, TRACK-IK and BIO-IK. Overall, this article presents for the first time the humanoid robot NICOL, and contributes to the integration of social robotics and neural visuomotor learning for humanoid robots.