Lorenzo Masia – Technische Universität München
Talk: “Embodied Intelligence for Human Augmentation and Collaborative Robotics”
Lorenzo Masia (Rome 1977) began his career in Mechanical Engineering with a degree from Sapienza University of Rome in 2003, followed by a PhD from the University of Padua in 2007. His initial steps into robotics were marked by two-year at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Newman Lab for Biomechanics and Human Rehabilitation.
He took on the role of Team Leader at the Italian Institute of Technology, specifically in the Robotics Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department. By 2013, Masia he was an Assistant Professor at Nanyang Technological University of Singapore in the School of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, where he remained until 2018 and later progressed at the University of Twente, where he held the position of Associate Professor in Biodesign.
Professor Masia has been at Heidelberg University in Germany (2019-2024), serving as a Full Professor in Biorobotics & Medical Technology, where he founded the ARIES Lab, focusing on Assistive Robotics and Interactive ExoSuits at the Institute of Computer Engineering (ZITI).
From the 1st of October 2024, he is Professor in “Intelligent Bio-Robotic Systems” and Executive Director of the Munich Institute for Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MIRMI) at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), one of most worldwide renown Robotics Institute.
During his directorate at TUM, together with the German Company Neura Robotics, he funded the NEURA TUM RoboGym which is a multimillion investment for building the largest European training and data farming center for industrial AI and Humanoids, and for which he will serve as Director after its opening in October 2026.
Professor Masia’s work has garnered international acclaim, evidenced by multiple international awards at leading conferences in Biorobotics and Robotic Rehabilitation, including two IEEE Best Paper Awards and three IEEE Best Student Paper Awards, among others.
In addition to his research and teaching, Professor Masia holds significant editorial roles with several prestigious journals, IEEE Transaction on Robotics, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, IEEE Transaction on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, Journal of Neuroengineering and Rehabilitation and Wearable Technologies. He has also played key roles as Program Chair in organizing major IEEE RAS conferences in the field, and he has been the General Chair for IEEE RAS EMBS BIOROB 2024 (1-4 September 2024, Heidelberg, Germany)
Outline of the Talk
Embodied intelligence is not confined to algorithms; rather, it emerges from the dynamic interaction among the human body, the robotic system, the task, and the surrounding environment. This presentation introduces a human-centred vision of embodied intelligence in which wearable and collaborative robots act as symbiotic partners, augmenting human capabilities while preserving agency, adaptability, and active participation.
The first part focuses on soft wearable robots, or exosuits: lightweight, clothing-like devices designed to function as an external layer of muscles rather than as rigid skeletal structures. Their development is explored through three closely interconnected pillars: actuation, control, and awareness. Advanced tendon-driven mechanisms, physiological and biomechanical sensing, adaptive myoelectric control, magnetic tracking, and gait-phase estimation enable assistance to be personalised to the needs and capabilities of each wearer. Artificial vision and context-aware control further allow exosuits to recognise transitions between activities—including walking, stair climbing, sitting, standing, and running—and adapt their assistance in real time.
The presentation then extends the concept of embodied intelligence from wearable augmentation to collaborative robotics. It introduces a new generation of collaborative workcells in which exosuits, sensing technologies, and cobots exchange information bidirectionally. Wearable systems provide insight into human intention, posture, movement, and physical effort, while the cobot adapts its behaviour to the user’s capabilities and changing physiological state. By combining wearable sensing, markerless motion capture, magnetic localisation, and human-aware robot control, this approach advances beyond simple coexistence towards genuine physical collaboration between humans and robots.
Finally, the presentation introduces the TUM–NEURA RoboGym, directed by Prof. Lorenzo Masia and Prof Achim Lilienthal. Located at Munich Airport, this large-scale research and innovation environment is dedicated to Physical AI and human-centred robotics. It integrates humanoid, collaborative, and mobile robots with multimodal sensing, teleoperation, simulation, and high-performance computing to generate real-world robotic data and train robotic foundation models. By connecting scientific research with industrial deployment, the RoboGym provides a unique platform for accelerating innovation in manufacturing and human–robot collaboration.
