Apollo 2

Apollo 2 is a modular humanoid robot platform developed by Apptronik for industrial pilots, robotics data collection, and embodied-AI research. Apptronik publicly unveiled it on June 30, 2026, alongside an expansion of its Robot Park training facility in Austin, Texas. The company offers bipedal and wheeled-base versions and describes Apollo 2 as the current version of the broader Apollo platform.^[1]

Apollo 2 is not Apptronik's planned mass-market commercial generation. Chief executive Jeff Cardenas has called it a prototype for scaled pilots and data collection, with lessons from the platform feeding the forthcoming Apollo 3. Apptronik said Apollo 2 had been in use since February 2025 before its public unveiling. Reuters reported that the company had built hundreds of units, although it declined to disclose how many were deployed. Apptronik expected pilots to continue through 2026, with production versions entering use in 2027 and later.^[3][4]

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Announcement and development status

Apptronik announced Apollo 2 as the hardware component of a larger humanoid system rather than as a finished commercial product. The company's platform description separates the stack into three parts. Apollo 2 is the physical robot, Artemis coordinates perception, planning, control, safety, task execution, and interaction, and Fleet Connect provides fleet monitoring, task orchestration, deployment management, and data collection.^[2]

The public launch came considerably later than the first hardware build. Cardenas said Apptronik had Apollo 2 in February 2025 and chose not to show it until the company had built more units and improved performance. In September 2025, before the name was public, he had confirmed that a new Apollo version was entering pilot tests but did not provide its specifications.^[4][6]

Apptronik's June 2026 release calls Apollo 2 the current platform and says it had already served as Robot Park's workhorse for more than a year. That role includes both teleoperated data collection and autonomous task execution. The data supports development of Apollo 3, which Apptronik identifies as its next-generation commercial product. Reuters separately reported that the company intended to remain in pilot activity through 2026 rather than begin production deployment immediately.^[1][3]

Hardware and disclosed specifications

Modular mobility

Apollo 2 uses a common upper-body platform with either legs or a wheeled base. The bipedal version is intended for spaces and work areas built around human movement. The wheeled version favors stability, travel efficiency, and longer operation in structured industrial facilities. Apptronik says both versions are in pilots, and that wheeled systems can be deployed at larger scale while the company continues to develop the safety and reliability of bipedal locomotion.^[1][4]

Modularity was already part of the 2023 Apollo concept, which could use legs, a wheeled base, or a stationary mount. Apollo 2 therefore does not introduce the idea of interchangeable mobility. Its current role is to apply the same platform across data-collection and pilot environments, with Apptronik publicly emphasizing the bipedal and wheeled configurations.^[1][5]

Actuation and mechanical design

Apptronik says Apollo 2 uses its own patented actuator technology and that the actuator platform is designed for more than 90% energy efficiency, maintainability, volume manufacturing, and reduced dependence on single-source suppliers. The product page does not identify the actuator count, joint layout, motor type, gearbox type, torque ratings, or which patent families are implemented in Apollo 2.^[2]

Apptronik's patent portfolio includes an active patent for a compact series elastic actuator with an elastic component and force-sensing arrangement, as well as a later patent for a radially stacked actuator. A separate humanoid-robot patent application describes upper-body and shoulder arrangements. These filings document Apptronik's engineering work, but none is a public bill of materials for Apollo 2. They cannot establish the exact actuator configuration of the announced robot.^[12][13][14]

Hands, perception, and human interaction

The Apollo 2 product page states that the robot supports dexterous manipulation and object handling but gives no finger count, hand degrees of freedom, tactile-sensor specification, grip force, or end-effector supplier. Google DeepMind's 2025 Gemini Robotics technical report describes a full-size Apollo research platform with five-fingered dexterous hands. The report predates the Apollo 2 announcement and does not identify that setup as Apollo 2, so it shows a research configuration rather than a confirmed production hand.^[8]

Apptronik has disclosed that Apollo 2 contains perception systems, but it has not named its cameras, depth sensors, inertial sensors, tactile sensors, processors, or onboard compute performance. The robot has an expressive LED mouth, coordinated lighting, speech and listening functions, and a chest display that can show status, battery level, charging state, and task progress. These interfaces are intended to make its state and intended activity legible during human-robot interaction.^[2]

Power and operating time

Apollo 2 supports swappable batteries, opportunity charging during idle periods, and tethered operation. Apptronik says battery swaps can enable 7x22 operation, meaning the system is designed around up to 22 operating hours per day across a seven-day schedule. This is an operating model, not a battery-capacity figure. The company has not published Apollo 2's battery chemistry, capacity, voltage, charging time, pack mass, or runtime on one pack.^[2]

The distinction matters because Apptronik's original 2023 Apollo announcement specified four hours per swappable battery. NASA described an updated Apollo in early 2026 as 5 feet 8 inches tall, 160 pounds, and able to carry 55 pounds, but did not name that version Apollo 2. Those legacy figures should not be treated as Apollo 2 specifications unless Apptronik confirms that the new hardware retained them.^[5][7]

Software and learning system

Artemis is Apptronik's robot-control layer. The company says it links perception and planning to whole-body control, safety systems, task execution, and interaction. Fleet Connect is the operations layer for monitoring multiple robots, assigning work, managing deployments, and collecting fleet data. Apptronik has not disclosed the operating system, supported developer interfaces, communications protocols, or whether every Gemini Robotics model runs onboard.^[2]

Apollo 2 also serves as an embodiment for Gemini Robotics, a family of vision-language-action models that maps visual observations and instructions to robot actions. Google has demonstrated Gemini Robotics across several robot forms, including Apollo, and describes the models as transferable across embodiments. At Robot Park, Apptronik combines real-world teleoperation, autonomous execution, and physics simulation to collect task data. That dataset is used to train and refine Gemini Robotics models intended for future Apptronik fleets.^[1][8]

Safety approach

Apollo 2's published safety design uses at least two spatial zones. An impact zone is intended to pause movement when an object enters a defined close radius. A configurable perimeter zone can change the robot's behavior when people, equipment, or obstacles enter the surrounding workspace. Apptronik also says the wheeled configuration was designed to conform with existing industrial mobile-robot safety standards, while the bipedal version remains a platform for developing walking safety and reliability in real settings.^[1][2]

The company has not named a specific safety standard or published a certification report for Apollo 2. It has also not disclosed validated collision-force limits, stopping distances, safety-rated sensor models, ingress protection, or environmental operating limits. Apptronik's descriptions of context-aware AI reasoning are design claims and do not replace independently reported functional-safety test results.

Differences from the original Apollo

The first Apollo was unveiled on August 23, 2023. Its public specifications included a height of 5 feet 8 inches, a weight of 160 pounds, a 55-pound payload, and four hours of runtime per swappable battery. Apollo 2 is a later hardware generation, but Apptronik has not published a component-by-component comparison or repeated those measurements for the new platform.^[5]

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This comparison identifies changes in Apptronik's public positioning and disclosed platform layers. It does not establish that every feature in the right column was absent from internal versions of the earlier robot.

Robot Park and deployments

Apptronik's expanded Austin Robot Park occupies nearly 90,000 square feet. Fleets of bipedal and wheeled Apollo 2 robots perform customer-driven tasks in logistics, manufacturing, retail, and related workflows. Apptronik says similar data-collection operations are active at Google DeepMind and at customer sites operated by Mercedes-Benz and GXO. The robots generate data through a mix of remote operation and autonomous execution.^[1]

Apptronik has not published a site-by-site unit count, paid utilization, task success rate, intervention rate, or hours worked without failure. Reuters reported that Cardenas would say only that the company had built hundreds of Apollo 2 robots. The same report said the facility was intended to move the program from pilots toward later production deployments.^[3]

The named customer relationships began before Apollo 2 was publicly identified. Mercedes-Benz announced an Apollo pilot in March 2024 for assembly-kit delivery, component inspection, and tote movement in manufacturing plants. GXO began an early-stage proof of concept in June 2024 to evaluate warehouse applications. Apptronik's 2026 release identifies both companies as Robot Park network sites, but neither partner has published Apollo 2 fleet size or production-throughput results.^[10][11]

Manufacturing partnership

In February 2025, Jabil became Apptronik's worldwide manufacturing partner for Apollo. The companies said Jabil would build robots, use newly manufactured units for validation in its own factories, and test tasks including inspection, sorting, kitting, lineside delivery, fixture placement, and subassembly. The partnership also targets a simpler bill of materials and a supply chain that can support production in multiple regions.^[9]

The Jabil announcement predates the Apollo 2 name and refers to Apollo generally. Public sources do not specify how many Apollo 2 units Jabil has built, which plants produce them, the production rate, or the unit cost. Apollo 2's known manufacturing role is therefore limited to prototype and pilot-scale learning. Apptronik has assigned broader commercial scaling to Apollo 3.^[3][4]

References

1. Apptronik, "Welcome to Robot Park: Where Apptronik's Apollo Goes to Work Training the Next Generation of Humanoid Robot Intelligence," June 30, 2026. https://apptronik.com/news-collection/welcome-to-robot-park-where-apptroniks-apollo-goes-to-work ↩
2. Apptronik, "Apollo 2," accessed July 24, 2026. https://apptronik.com/apollo/apollo-2 ↩
3. Akash Sriram, Reuters, "Apptronik launches robot training hub, unveils Apollo 2 humanoid robot," June 30, 2026. https://www.sahmcapital.com/news/content/apptronik-launches-robot-training-hub-unveils-apollo-2-humanoid-robot-2026-06-30 ↩
4. John Koetsier, "Apptronik CEO on Apollo 3, Robot Park, and Google DeepMind," July 2026. https://johnkoetsier.com/apptronik-ceo-on-apollo-3-robot-park-and-google-deepmind/ ↩
5. Apptronik, "Apptronik Unveils Apollo," August 23, 2023. https://apptronik.com/news-collection/apptronik-unveils-apollo ↩
6. Association for Advancing Automation, "Apptronik Plans to Debut Next Humanoid This Year," September 25, 2025. https://www.automate.org/robotics/industry-insights/apptroniks-next-humanoid-will-debut-this-year ↩
7. NASA Spinoff, "Humanoid Robots Assist Assembly Lines," 2026. https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Humanoid_Robots_Assist_Assembly_Lines ↩
8. Gemini Robotics Team et al., "Gemini Robotics: Bringing AI into the Physical World," arXiv:2503.20020, March 2025. https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.20020 ↩
9. Jabil, "Apptronik and Jabil Collaborate to Scale Production of Apollo Humanoid Robots and Deploy in Manufacturing Operations," February 25, 2025. https://investors.jabil.com/news/news-details/2025/Apptronik-and-Jabil-Collaborate-to-Scale-Production-of-Apollo-Humanoid-Robots-and-Deploy-in-Manufacturing-Operations/default.aspx ↩
10. Apptronik, "Apptronik and Mercedes-Benz Enter Commercial Agreement," March 15, 2024. https://apptronik.com/news-collection/apptronik-and-mercedes-benz-enter-commercial-agreement ↩
11. GXO Logistics, "GXO Advances Humanoid Strategy, Announces Multi-Phase R&D Initiative with Apptronik," June 20, 2024. https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2024/06/20/2901558/0/en/GXO-advances-humanoid-strategy-announces-multi-phase-R-D-initiative-with-Apptronik.html ↩
12. Nicholas Paine, Jonas Fox, and Bradley Resh, "Compact, High Performance Series Elastic Actuator," U.S. Patent 11,035,743, June 15, 2021. https://patents.google.com/patent/US11035743B2/en ↩
13. Paul Gloninger Fleury, Nicholas Arden Paine, and Jonas Alexan Fox, "Radially Stacked Actuator," U.S. Patent 11,967,882, April 23, 2024. https://patents.google.com/patent/US11967882B2/en ↩
14. Paul Gloninger Fleury, Nicholas Arden Paine, and Jonas Alexan Fox, "Humanoid Robot," U.S. Patent Application US20250042020A1, February 6, 2025. https://patents.google.com/patent/US20250042020A1/en ↩