Nicholas Paine
Co-founder and CTO of Apptronik; worked on actuators for NASA's Valkyrie humanoid robot
Nicholas (Nick) Paine is a co-founder and the Chief Technology Officer of Apptronik, which builds the Apollo humanoid robot. Since Apptronik's founding in 2016, Paine has directed its technical strategy and execution, across commercial humanoids, force-augmenting exoskeletons and robotic manipulators.1
Research
Paine's graduate work at the University of Texas at Austin produced the UT Series Elastic Actuator, a compact, high-performance actuator for robots. As a member of the NASA-JSC team for the DARPA Robotics Challenge, Paine helped design series elastic actuators and wrote actuator-level controllers for the Valkyrie humanoid.1
Paine then spent a year as a postdoctoral researcher at UT Austin studying forced-convective cooling of electric motors and embedded system design.1
Apptronik
Paine co-founded Apptronik in 2016 and has led its technical work since, on designs that range from commercial humanoids to exoskeletons and manipulators.1
Products and projects
Apptronik unveiled its Apollo humanoid robot in August 2023 and in March 2024 announced a commercial agreement with Mercedes-Benz to use Apollo for physically demanding manual work. In December 2024 it announced a research partnership with the Google DeepMind robotics team.234
In June 2026 Apptronik opened an expanded Robot Park facility for collecting real-world training data and unveiled Apollo 2, in bipedal and wheeled configurations, whose data feeds AI models developed with Google DeepMind.5
Work
UT Series Elastic Actuator
Graduate work at UT Austin developed the UT Series Elastic Actuator, a compact, high-performance actuator for robots.1
Apollo humanoid robot (external site: apptronik.com)
Directs technical strategy at the company that unveiled Apollo in 2023 and Apollo 2 in 2026.125
Career timeline
2016
Co-founded Apptronik.1
Aug 23, 2023
Apptronik unveiled the Apollo humanoid robot.2
Mar 15, 2024
Apptronik announced a commercial agreement with Mercedes-Benz for Apollo.3
Dec 19, 2024
Apptronik announced a partnership with the Google DeepMind robotics team.4
Jun 30, 2026
Apptronik opened its expanded Robot Park and unveiled Apollo 2.5
Other documented roles
Roles the sources document but that are not confirmed as current.
Related people
More sourced profiles at the same organization, in the same field, or from the same school.
- Jeff CardenasAlso at Apptronik
- Satish JeyachandranChips and hardware
- Cho-Jui HsiehAlso from UT Austin
- Aaron TeoChips and hardware
- David HarwathAlso from UT Austin
- Alexander AminiRobotics
- James E. DavisAlso from UT Austin
- Amnon ShashuaRobotics
- Kenneth StanleyAlso from UT Austin
- Anca DraganRobotics
- Rajat SenAlso from UT Austin
- Andrew BosworthChips and hardware
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