Case Study: German Aerospace Center (DLR) achieves real-time, reliable control of the Agile Justin humanoid with MathWorks (MATLAB & Simulink)

German Aerospace Center (DLR) Robotics and Mechatronics Center Develops Autonomous Humanoid Robot with Model-Based Design

The German Aerospace Center (DLR) Robotics and Mechatronics Center developed Agile Justin, a two-armed mobile humanoid with 53 degrees of freedom, and faced the challenge of building unified control systems that process multi-sensor input, plan continuous trajectories, and manage dozens of joints — tasks too complex to hand-code. To address the need for model-based workflows, automatic code generation, and hardware-in-the-loop testing, the team adopted MathWorks tools including MATLAB and Simulink.

Using MathWorks’ Model-Based Design with MATLAB, Simulink, Simulink Coder and associated toolboxes (Control System, Optimization, Image Processing, Signal Processing, Stateflow), DLR modeled plants and controllers, generated real-time C code for QNX and TI DSP targets, performed HIL testing, automated sensor calibration, and optimized whole-body motions. The MathWorks-based solution cut functional defects by about 80%, enabled complex coordinated motions to be implemented in hours, and let students develop sophisticated controllers within months.

German Aerospace Center

Berthold Bäuml

Head of the Autonomous Learning Robots Laboratory