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Physical AI Lab — RWTH Aachen

Robots that learn
for the real world.

Perceive, Reason, Act. Over Long Horizons.

What we do

We develop generalist robots that autonomously solve real-world long-horizon tasks.

The Physical AI Lab is a young and growing research group at the Chair of Imaging and Computer Vision, RWTH Aachen University. We build learning-based robotic systems that perceive, reason and act in complex environments — combining vision, language and control into agents that carry a task through to completion rather than executing a single isolated skill.

Our work spans method development, large-scale training, and evaluation both in simulation and on physical robots operating in real-world scenarios.

Research

Vision-Language-Action Models Models that map what a robot sees and is told directly into what it does, so one system generalises across tasks. Robotic World Models Learned models of environment dynamics, letting a robot anticipate the consequences of an action before committing to it. Active Perception Deciding where to look and when to look again — resolving ambiguity through deliberate interaction rather than passive observation. Structured Memory Systems Memory that persists and stays organised, so what a robot learned earlier in a task remains retrievable across long horizons. Human-Robot Cognitive Alignment Aligning a robot's representations and intentions with human expectations, so instructions land as they were meant. Hybrid Imitation & Reinforcement Learning Demonstrations give a strong start, reinforcement refines it — with an emphasis on sample efficiency and sim-to-real transfer. Medical Robotics Transferring learned robotic autonomy to clinical settings, where precision, reliability and interpretability carry particular weight.

The lab

Facility

NEURA Gym RWTH Aachen

A newly built laboratory where robots operate in real-world scenarios, giving the group a testbed for autonomy well beyond simulation.

Network

Academic & industry partners

Active collaborations that connect our research to real deployment settings and to the wider robot learning community.

Join the lab

We are hiring.
PhD / HiWi / Thesis

Shape a young and growing group working on Physical AI and robot learning. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis.