NEURA Robotics and RWTH Aachen University are developing a robotics training facility at the university’s Hightech Campus Melaten, with an opening planned by the end of 2026. The approximately 3,000-square-metre NEURA Gym RWTH Aachen will support robotics research, artificial intelligence training and the testing of robots for industrial applications. Around 20 university institutes are expected to participate in the facility.
The project forms part of NEURA Robotics’ planned international network of training centres for so-called Physical AI, which refers to artificial intelligence systems operating through robots and other physical machines. The company has 10 centres under development and expects five locations across Europe, the United States and China to be operational by the end of 2026.
The facilities are intended to generate real-world training data for robots by combining physical testing with computer simulations. Industrial companies and developers will be able to use the centres to train and validate robots for specific applications before deploying them in production environments.
Data generated through the facilities will be connected to the Neuraverse, NEURA’s cloud-based platform for robots, developers and industrial partners. The company said participating organisations would retain control of their own data.
The Aachen facility will focus on applications including manufacturing, automotive production, the circular economy and medical technology. Research at the site will include computer vision, physics-based AI models, robot motion and manipulation, and human-robot interaction.
Two RWTH Aachen research groups will help shape the facility’s research programme. Volkmar Schulz, chair of imaging and computer vision, will work on physics-based foundation models for robotics. Burkhard Corves, head of the Institute of Mechanism Theory, Machine Dynamics and Robotics, will focus on methods for safe human-robot interaction.
“The biggest bottleneck in Physical AI is no longer intelligence, it’s experience,” NEURA Robotics founder and chief executive David Reger said. He said the facilities would allow companies to convert their operational knowledge into robot capabilities while maintaining control of their data.
RWTH Aachen rector Ulrich Rüdiger said the collaboration would combine the university’s work in mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and computer science with NEURA’s robotics platform.
NEURA is also working with the Technical University of Munich and its Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence on the TUM RoboGym at Munich Airport. That 2,300-square-metre facility is scheduled to open in the fourth quarter of 2026 and will house a fleet of humanoid and cognitive robots.
The Munich project is supported by a €17 million commitment and is expected to serve as the first operational centre in NEURA’s planned international network. NEURA said the wider rollout is being financed through its Series C funding round, which could total as much as $1.4 billion.
