Ameca vs Nadine: Two Realistic Humanoid Robots Compared

Ameca vs Nadine at a Glance

Ameca is a rentable exhibition robot from Engineered Arts. Nadine is a research android that Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Singapore and the University of Geneva have run since 2013. In the guides we publish here, a robot built for events and a robot built for one long research program get judged on different evidence rather than on looks.

Neither Ameca nor Nadine has ever had a price tag, a checkout page, or a shipping date. Engineered Arts is a UK robotics company that quotes and rents Ameca out to museums, trade shows, and brand events. Nadine was built in 2013 and has stayed inside academic research ever since.

Nadine's research home has moved once. She started at NTU Singapore's Institute for Media Innovation, then moved to the University of Geneva's MIRALab. The table below lines the two robots up on maker, hardware, public appearances, and evidence base.

Ameca: Engineered Arts' Exhibition-Circuit Humanoid

Engineered Arts built Ameca to work stages, museum floors, and trade-show booths. Engineered Arts publishes a full actuator map: 61 actuated movements in total. Of those, 27 degrees of freedom sit in the head and face alone.

Ameca ships with more than 50 preset facial expressions. Engineered Arts lets a customer tune every individual joint through its Tritium software platform. Tritium also supports a customer's choice of large language model (LLM) for Ameca's speech.

Below the neck, Engineered Arts publishes the same level of detail. The joint map lists 8 degrees of freedom in the shoulders and 10 in the arms. It lists 8 more in the hands and 3 in the torso.

Engineered Arts publishes no price for Ameca. Getting one means requesting a quote or booking a rental. That path fits museums, trade shows, and corporate events.

It does not fit a hobbyist wanting a personal robot. Ameca holds a permanent post at Dubai's Museum of the Future and at Sphere Las Vegas. Recent appearances include Milan Fashion Week 2025, VivaTech 2025, and Mobile World Congress 2024.

Nadine: A Research Android Shared Between NTU Singapore and Geneva's MIRALab

Professor Nadia Magnenat Thalmann built Nadine as a mirror of herself. The Japanese robotics company Kokoro built Nadine's physical shell in 2013. Kokoro shaped the face and hands to match Thalmann's own.

Nadine's software followed a separate path. NTU Singapore's Institute for Media Innovation developed it first. The University of Geneva's MIRALab develops it today, along with her articulated hands.

That single android has done real work outside the lab. Nadine greeted more than 100,000 visitors during the ArtScience Museum's HUMAN+ exhibition in Singapore in 2017. She also worked an October 2018 to February 2019 customer-service pilot at AIA Insurance in Singapore.

A published case study then placed Nadine at Bright Hill Evergreen Home, a Singapore nursing home, hosting Bingo sessions for elderly residents around 2020 and 2021. Researchers found residents calmer, happier, and more engaged when Nadine ran the game than when staff did.

Thalmann has made a broader argument in separate interviews: isolated seniors decline quickly without regular interaction. A robot that keeps asking questions can fill part of that gap when no caregiver is present.

That is a research question about loneliness and staffing. It is not a pitch for a personal or romantic companion, and no Bright Hill material markets Nadine that way.

MIRALab has published more than 45 research papers on Nadine's design and behavior. A 2024 paper describes wiring a large language model (LLM) into her dialogue system for sharper conversational and emotional responses.

Nadine also appeared at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)'s AI for Good Global Summit. The Geneva event ran in July 2026.

How Each Robot Is Built

Ameca runs on Tritium, Engineered Arts' own software platform, wired to whichever large language model (LLM) a customer picks to drive its speech and reasoning. Behavior gets scripted in a browser through Python.

A 360-degree LiDAR sensor also watches the space around Ameca. It keeps a 3.2-meter safety zone clear around the fixed base, since Ameca has no legs and cannot walk on its own.

Nadine runs on a three-layer system instead. A perception layer reads audio and video from cameras and microphones. A processing layer generates dialogue and tracks memory of visitors who return.

An interaction layer handles the rest. It drives facial expression, lip movement, and gaze, so the conversation reads as natural rather than mechanical.

A 2025 University of Geneva study tested what predicts whether a visitor wants to talk with Nadine again. Interestingness in the conversation was the strongest signal, stronger than warmth or how human Nadine seemed. The finding surprised the research team going in.

What Separates Ameca From Nadine

In the guides we publish here, readers often judge a humanoid's realism from a demo clip. What the manufacturer or research lab actually publishes tells a fuller story. Ameca's actuator map is exactly that kind of checkable detail, and so are Nadine's peer-reviewed findings.

Ameca is a hardware line a venue can put on a floor plan next week. Engineered Arts publishes wall power draw and a LiDAR safety zone. It also publishes rental timelines.

A museum or a trade-show booth needs all three numbers to plan an installation. Nadine is a different kind of asset. She has run inside the same research program since 2013.

She moved from NTU Singapore to the University of Geneva without a hardware refresh. Her value comes from a data trail rather than a spec sheet. That trail includes named pilot deployments and peer-reviewed findings that keep testing the same robot on new questions.

Matching Ameca and Nadine to a Research Question

Ameca fits research into expressive-robot engineering and actuator design. It also fits research into how a rental humanoid handles a real venue. Its published joint map and event history give a project real numbers to compare.

Nadine fits research into long-term human-robot interaction and affective computing. It also fits research into robot-assisted eldercare. A controlled study repeated on one subject over years matters more there than a hardware demo.

The Bright Hill eldercare pilot is exactly that kind of evidence. So is the 2025 re-engagement study. Neither robot fits anyone shopping for a robot to own.

Ameca has no consumer checkout. Nadine has never left its research program for a paid pilot outside academia. A reader looking for a home helper should start with the robot companion guide or the female humanoid robots buying guide instead.

That verdict would change under one condition on each side. Engineered Arts would have to post a firm consumer price with a real checkout. NTU and the University of Geneva would have to open a paid pilot for Nadine outside a research agreement.

Neither step has happened as of this comparison. No public source describes either one as planned.

Anyone comparing Ameca vs Nadine for a research proposal should start with the Ameca robot review and Nadine's own published papers. For the media-facing side of this field, read Sophia vs Nadine and the Sophia robot review.

Those two cover a robot built for public attention rather than a rental fleet or a lab. Ameca vs Sophia lines Ameca up against that same media-facing humanoid.