For years, humanoid robots have dazzled audiences at trade fairs—walking, waving, lifting boxes for the camera. What they have not done is work reliably, day after day, in the messy reality of human environments.

That gap is exactly what a new initiative in Munich is designed to close.

At Munich Airport, inside the Convergence Center of the Technical University of Munich (TUM), construction is underway on what could become Europe’s largest robotics training facility. Known as the TUM Robo‑Gym, the center will host up to 400 robots, including around 100 humanoid machines, all trained for practical, real‑world tasks using artificial intelligence.

The project is a joint effort between TUM and German high‑tech company NEURA Robotics, founded in 2019 and already working with industrial partners such as Schaeffler and Bosch. Together, they are investing around €17 million into the center, with NEURA contributing roughly €11 million, primarily to fund the robots themselves and the maintenance of the hardware.

Training Robots Like Apprentices

What makes the Robo‑Gym unusual is not just its scale, but its philosophy.

Unlike large language models, embodied AI cannot simply be trained on vast quantities of internet data. A robot cannot learn how to fold components, assemble parts, or interact safely with people by watching videos alone. Movements must be physically demonstrated, repeated, corrected, and recorded with precision.

“The idea is to collect as much high‑quality data as possible,” explains Lorenzo Masia, managing director of TUM’s Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MIRMI) and one of the center’s future leaders. Robots in the facility will be trained directly by humans—learning tasks such as folding, sorting, or assembling components. The resulting datasets will then make it easier to train future robots faster and more efficiently.

In effect, robots will be treated like apprentices—learning by doing, under human supervision.

Research Meets Industrial Reality

The Robo‑Gym will be jointly led by Lorenzo Masia and Achim Lilienthal, both professors at MIRMI. Beyond hardware, TUM and NEURA have signed a broader cooperation agreement covering robotics technology and academic AI research. The goal is not just experimentation, but translation: moving insights from the lab into deployable systems.

This tight coupling between research and industry is deliberate. Europe, Masia argues, cannot afford a divide between scientific excellence and commercial execution—particularly in a technology as strategically relevant as robotics.

The issue is not just innovation, but sovereignty.

Jobs Lost—or Jobs Shifted?

Training robots to perform tasks traditionally done by humans inevitably raises concerns about job displacement. Masia does not deny the risk. “With every wave of technological innovation, jobs disappear,” he says. But new ones also emerge—particularly roles focused on programming, maintaining, and supervising automated systems.

From a purely economic perspective, Masia acknowledges, companies may prefer fully automated processes. Yet he insists the human must remain central—especially in systems designed to operate alongside people.

TUM President Thomas Hofmann shares that view. Humanoid robots, he says, will become a supportive part of everyday life “in the near future.” The challenge is ensuring safety, trust, and coexistence. That is why the Robo‑Gym places such emphasis not just on functionality, but on safe human‑robot interaction.

A European Talent Factory

The center is still under construction, with first operations expected no earlier than May. In the long term, 400 to 500 people—including many students—are expected to work and train alongside the robots.

For Masia, this is as much an educational project as a technological one. The Robo‑Gym is meant to help form a new generation of European robotics and AI experts, capable of designing, deploying, and governing intelligent machines.

The choice of a German partner was no coincidence. NEURA Robotics is growing rapidly and places strong emphasis on technological sovereignty—a theme that runs through the entire project.

NEURA founder and CEO David Reger describes the partnership as a fusion of “excellent research and entrepreneurial execution,” aimed at strengthening Germany’s and Europe’s leadership in intelligent robotics.

From Demo to Daily Use

The Robo‑Gym represents a shift in ambition. This is not about making robots more impressive. It is about making them useful.

If successful, Munich’s robot training center could mark a turning point: from robotics as spectacle to robotics as infrastructure—embedded in production, logistics, services, and daily life.

Europe is not just building robots. It is training them—carefully, methodically, and at scale.

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