Recently, the official Tesla Optimus account posted a video on social media X, showing the practical application scenario of its newly developed humanoid robot Optimus "working" in Tesla's factory. And the accompanying text said, "Recently, efforts have been made to become useful!" This 90-second demo video not only demonstrates the efficient work ability of Optimus, but also heralds a new explosion in the general humanoid robot industry.
In the video, the Optimus robot is busy sorting battery cells on the production line of the Tesla factory. Behind this is the result of Optimus' end-to-end neural network being carefully trained to accurately dispense the battery cells at Tesla's factory. It is worth mentioning that all operations of Optimus are run in real time on the robot's FSD computer, and high-precision operation is achieved by relying only on simple devices such as 2D cameras, hand touch, and force sensors.
At present, humanoid robots are at a critical juncture from the laboratory to industrialization, and finding suitable landing application scenarios has become the focus of the development of all humanoid robot manufacturers, among which the manufacturing industry is becoming the main scenario for the first landing application of humanoid robots. Since the beginning of this year, a number of manufacturing companies have introduced humanoid robots in their factories and begun to test their applications.
Magna International
In April, Sanctuary AI, a humanoid robot development company, announced that it was entering into a new strategic partnership with Magna International, an automotive manufacturer and assembler. By expanding this partnership, Sanctuary plans to provide Magna's manufacturing facilities with general AI robots.
Magna is one of Europe's leading automotive manufacturing and assembly plants, manufacturing and assembling vehicles for several top automakers, including Mercedes, Jaguar and BMW. Magna has been an investor in Sanctuary AI since 2021. Not long ago, Accenture and Magna announced an undisclosed investment in Sanctuary.
"Magna is excited to partner with Sanctuary AI on our shared mission to drive the future of manufacturing," said Todd Deaville, Vice President, Advanced Manufacturing Innovation, Magna. By integrating general AI robots into our manufacturing facilities to perform specific tasks, we can enhance our ability to deliver high-quality products to our customers. ”
As Sanctuary AI moves forward with the commercialization of the Phoenix robot, the company also plans to sign a contract with Magna to collaborate on the production of some of the robots in the future. Sanctuary claims that finding the right manufacturing partner to mass-produce robots is the best way to outsource, and that manufacturing shouldn't be a core task for any robotics startup.
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Hyundai Motors
On April 17, Boston Dynamics released a video on its official website to launch the new Atlas humanoid robot, which adopts the form of electric drive, marking that Boston Dynamics, a pioneer of humanoid robots, continues to be optimistic about the field of humanoid robots and shifts to electric drive solutions on the technical route.
In a previous video released by Boston, the Boston Dynamics Atlas has successfully learned to handle medium-weight car parts, demonstrating its new progress in motion control.
With the launch of the electric version of the Atlas, Boston Dynamics CEO Robert Playter said that he will work with Hyundai Group to continue to demonstrate the capabilities of humanoid robots in the lab, factory and life, and to assist in the process of building robots at a reasonable cost.
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NIO
According to the relevant person in charge of NIO, based on the thinking and understanding of the humanoid robot itself, NIO will form a humanoid robot "team" in 2023. It mainly focuses on the underlying technology of humanoid robots, including algorithms, dynamic perception, and large models, and conducts some research.
NIO has made two main attempts to "build a humanoid robot car", one is to fix the humanoid robotic arm in a small space and use 5G and vision algorithms to perform multi-task operations, and the other is to conduct quality inspection of some items of the humanoid robot.
NIO has mainly completed the integration of humanoid robots with manufacturing system tools, and also used this humanoid robot to carry visual sensors to collect the appearance of the vehicle, and use algorithms to judge the quality of the images, so as to realize the function of vehicle inspection.
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Mercedes-Benz
On March 16, Mercedes-Benz and the humanoid robot company Apptronik jointly announced an important agreement. In the agreement, Mercedes-Benz will introduce Apollo robots to its factories to test the application of humanoid robots in the automotive environment.
Jeff Cardenas, founder and CEO of Apptronik, said Mercedes plans to use robots and Apollo to accomplish some low-skill, physically demanding tasks. For example, inspecting vehicle parts, sending parts to the assembly line for workers to assemble, and delivering assembled parts, etc.
At this time, it is unclear how many Apollo robots will be used in this test. Jörg Burzer, Member of the Management Board of the Mercedes-Benz Group, said: "In order to create the most desirable cars, we are constantly pushing the future of automotive production. Advances in robotics and artificial intelligence are also opening up new opportunities. ”
BMW plant
At the beginning of 2024, humanoid robotics startup Figure announced a major agreement with automotive giant BMW to officially introduce its humanoid robots to BMW's car manufacturing plants.
This is the first commercial agreement signed by Figure since its inception in 2022. While the company did not disclose how many of the company's robots BMW will use, Figure's chief executive, Brett Adcock, said the partnership will start with a small number of robots and scale up if performance targets are met.
Specifically, BMW plans to deploy Figure 01, a humanoid robot with Figure, at its Spartanburg, South Carolina plant. The plant is the largest automotive export manufacturing facility in the U.S. and currently employs 11,000 people. Figure's robots will be gradually integrated into manufacturing processes such as body shops, sheet metal, and warehouses over the next 12-24 months after being trained on specific tasks.
Brett Adcock said: "The potential of universal humanoid robots is completely unexplored. He further noted, "Our robots will enable companies to increase productivity, reduce costs, and create a safer, more consistent work environment." ”
It can be seen that automobile production, as the most mature manufacturing industry, has become the first stop for humanoid robots in the manufacturing industry. In November last year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Guiding Opinions on the Innovation and Development of Humanoid Robots", which mentioned that it is necessary to create highly reliable humanoid robot solutions in special application scenarios for the needs of harsh conditions and dangerous scenarios; Focus on key areas of manufacturing such as 3C and automobiles, and build humanoid robot demonstration production lines and factories; Expand the service application of humanoid robots in people's livelihood fields such as medical care and housekeeping, and promote the application of humanoid robots in key industries such as agriculture and logistics. The support of the policy also provides strong support for the landing of humanoid robots in the manufacturing industry, but there is still a long way to go from pilot application to large-scale landing.