BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time

Whenever I hear german companies mention digitalisation, I get reminded that they still use pen and pencil in production environments to log data, pass those sheets to secreteries who enter the data into legacy systems so data analysts can enter it into another system that then has an integration with SAP. Data from SAP then flows onwards to some buzzword filled Azure product that costs a few million a month from which someone downloads an xls file and uploads it to Tableau where they run some simple calculations. Someone else downloads it as an xls and manually writes (not copy pastes) the numbers into a power point presentation and makes graphs by drawing shapes. This is then presented at some bi-monthly meeting.

I wish I was making this stuff up.

Not sure this counts as "humanoid" any more than the robots we've had in factories for a century... the hands and feet are nothing like a human's, and would not be improved by being more human.

It seems they just made the shape of their machine have a vaguely human silhouette so they could ride a hype wave.

I'm all for programmable humanoid robots, humans are an awesome human interface, but this ain't it.

A union in Germany is fighting Tesla over this same thing...

>. In 2026, Giga Berlin is the pilot site for the "Optimus" Gen-3 integration—humanoid robots performing repetitive tasks in the battery pack assembly area. IG Metall views this not as progress, but as a threat to job security.

https://www.teslaacessories.com/blogs/news/the-giga-berlin-s...

I still don’t understand how this can be considered cheaper or more productive than using a human.

I’m all for automation in industry, but the "human simulation" approach (where a robot mimics a human on a production line instead of using a process optimized for machine operation) just doesn’t make sense to me.

Seems to be this European robotics company

https://robotics.hexagon.com/product/

https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/hexagon-robotics-ai-software-a...

Let me first comment that this is just another publicity stunt and that there will be no useful humanoids in BMW factories in the near future. Then I will read TFA and get back here.

I would place a bet that there are dozens to hundreds of German engineers gnashing their teeth over this travesty. This is a pure FOMO driven exercise, and the insulting thing is that BMWs management didn't even learn from Hyundai who ended up buying Boston Dynamics who started all of this madness with Atlas, which despite being the best humanoid robot still has no business case.

It's especially funny to have a demo of human shaped robots doing low productivity tasks in a staged environment in a factory that has dozens of real robots doing real work faster and more productively than humans. Real robots work behind barriers because they are strong enough to be dangerous. But that hasn't got a sci-fi narrative for the public to latch on to.

Here is a 60 Minutes piece showing Boston Dynamics Atlas working in a car factory in the United States. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6ISdRkS37I

It is a pilot project. German pilot projects rarely go anywhere. If this succeeds against all odds, I hope for BMW that the robots are buying cars, too.

I wonder if it's for real and at a meaningful scale, or if it's for the press release.

I see the industry found its new buzzword: humanoid robots

Slap a "head" on an industrial machines and watch investors go brrrrrrrrr

This doesn't feel like it needs to be humanoid shaped. It does not appear ambulatory. Why not just tracked chassis with some robot arms. That said, humanoid robots with food tracks very anime.

Looks like they already have been testing it in the Spartanburg, SC, USA plant (just outside of Greenville SC [also I think the largest BMW factory in the world making most of their SUVs]). Still I don't get why a humanoid robot would be a thing for car making, a robot arm seems like it'd almost always be more efficient.

That's excellent! I look forward to much cheaper cars now that the robots will be making them for the masses.

The video screams demo and stupid stuff.

Seems so funny to me that we are building llms to write in english code for computers. And building robots to perform some automated processes in the shape of humans.

When are we going to rip the bandaid off, and skip bothering with the ux layer built for humans? I guess that is just old fashioned 20th century factory style automation that doesn't get headlines written about it, at least not in these decades.

The first question I had when watching this was how this robot doesn’t fall over with just these two tiny wheels. The center of mass is much higher than on a Segway, for example, isn’t it?

Meanwhile China has dark factories.

Now they can produce even more cars nobody wants.

BMW really needs to change its strategy to build cars for the future ( battery electric vehicles ) and stop churning out all those heavy diesel SUVs.

Because it doesn't matter how efficient you produce something, if it is the wrong thing you produce. Actually producing the wrong product highly efficiently makes matters even worse. It's like running in the wrong direction, but faster.

So their cars will get cheaper, right... right???

Not sure what the drawers are on the robot but one of the humanoid robots I saw changed its own battery that was pretty cool (I think it had 2).

Why doesn't anybody do the shoulder complex right? It gives me itches to scratch.

I think this is going to be bad for BMW, and bad for the current robotics-summer. I _hope_ that’s not the case, I’d love for robotics to get deployed more widely in manufacturing. But I’m pretty sure it will be. I think the chances of meaningful success would be higher with non-humanoid robotics

According to Figure, their robots had already been deployed in production

Looking forward to using one of those robots as a butler.

What advantages has a humanoid robot compared to automation for the tasks in a factory?

I mean: yeah, it's easier to think for a human how to operate a human. Is this the Pareto optimum? No low hanging fruits left?

Does anyone here with years of experience in robotics have a better explanation? (I hope so, because all the domain experts I met, always could tackle questions that pop into the mind of a layman without even breaking a sweat. Experts being experts, obviously)

These humanoid robots making cars is always a bit disappointing. If you look at videos of an assembly line the humans do manually dexterous complex tasks like bolting in car seats which are move in by hand, or helping place windshields into position.

The problem humanoid robots solve would be addressed better by simply altering the design of the car to not require humans to do that stuff.

What we actually see is humanoid robots deployed to do tasks that can already be done with simpler robot arms...

The robots featured in the embedded promotional video appear to be mostly useless. This is the opposite of impressive.

So not Figure AI?

This is BMW's clever attack on Tesla's overvaluation, partially based on Optimus hype.

The use of (general purpose) humanoid robots in manufacturing will fail. BMW is just accelerating that outcome.

Then Tesla's market cap will implode.

Note that Tesla's business is pivoting to batteries. Demand is basically infinite. They'll kill it, basically printing money, if they survive the transition.

Pass the popcorn.

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How they work? Without indication

And this is how it starts in EU

Will they dance? I've yet to see someone demo a humanoid robot doing something useful. Clearly, making them dance can't be that difficult.

They will deploy robots , but their infotainment system is crap. Entire pricing model is to sell extra volume in engine for $10k on each measurable step , even though electric cars has a solved performance that is only limited by tires. Not to mention their gas cars are way more complex vs electric. Sure that will save bmw .