This article presents iRonCub 3, a jet-powered humanoid robot, and its first flight experiments. Unlike traditional aerial vehicles, iRonCub 3 aims to achieve flight using a full-body humanoid form, which poses unique challenges in control, estimation, and system integration. We highlight the robot's current mechanical and software architecture, including its propulsion system, control framework, and experimental infrastructure. The control and estimation framework is first validated in simulation by performing a takeoff and tracking a reference trajectory. Then, we demonstrate, for the first time, a liftoff of a jet-powered humanoid robot - an initial but significant step toward aerial humanoid mobility. Also, we detail how the experimental area around a jet-powered humanoid robot should be designed in order to deal with a level of complexity that is substantially superior than indoor humanoid robot experiments.
@article{arxiv.2506.01125,
title = {iRonCub 3: The Jet-Powered Flying Humanoid Robot},
author = {Davide Gorbani and Hosameldin Awadalla Omer Mohamed and Giuseppe L'Erario and Gabriele Nava and Punith Reddy Vanteddu and Shabarish Purushothaman Pillai and Antonello Paolino and Fabio Bergonti and Saverio Taliani and Alessandro Croci and Nicholas James Tremaroli and Silvio Traversaro and Bruno Vittorio Trombetta and Daniele Pucci},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.01125},
year = {2025}
}