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Thu, 28 May 2026

Thu, 28 May 2026 Humanoid robots 'the future' of car making, says BMW

BMW is introducing humanoid robots to a car plant in Europe, building on similar projects in the US.
BMW plans to use humanoid robots, called Aeon, in its car manufacturing process in Europe for the first time. The robots, made by Hexagon Robotics, are currently undergoing a test deployment at the Leipzig factory and will start working on production tasks from summer. According to BMW's head of process management and digitalisation, Michael Nikolaides, human-shaped robots offer greater flexibility as they can be integrated into existing workflows. The Aeon robot is 1.65m tall, weighs 60kg, and has a top speed of 2.4m/second. It is equipped with 21 sensors, including cameras, radar, and force and torque sensors for manipulation. The training process involved teleoperation, simulation in a digital twin of the factory using software from Nvidia, and reinforcement learning. Hexagon's president of robotics, Arnaud Robert, believes that imitation learning can significantly reduce the time required to train robots, making them more practical for industries like automotive manufacturing. Within three to five years, it is estimated that robots will be able to take simple voice instructions to carry out tasks effectively. The humanoid robots' primary jobs at BMW will be to feed parts to manufacturing tools and perform pick-and-place tasks during battery assembly. Nikolaides sees the potential of these robots to help address labor shortages in the industry while also automating repetitive or physically challenging work. Other carmakers, including Toyota, Hyundai, and Xiaomi, are also experimenting with humanoid robots for various applications, such as industrial inspection and electric vehicle production. BMW has already gained experience using humanoid robots in its Spartanburg factory in the US, where they have helped build over 30,000 model X3 cars at a human pace.