BMW said it aims to experiment with general-purpose humanoid robots in its South Carolina manufacturing plant, a step forward for autonomous technology.
BMW announced on Tuesday that it had signed a commercial agreement with Figure, a California-based robot manufacturer, to help automate the more difficult tasks that employees perform so that staff can focus on other parts of the carmaking process. The two companies will initially work together to identify areas where the robots can be used before deploying them in BMW’s Spartanburg factory. This will be the first commercial deal signed by Figure since it was founded in 2022.
“Single-purpose robotics have saturated the commercial market for decades, but the potential of general purpose robotics is completely untapped,” said Brett Adcock, Figure’s CEO, in a press statement. “Figure’s robots will enable companies to increase productivity, reduce costs, and create a safer and more consistent environment.”
“The use of general-purpose robot solutions has the potential to make productivity more efficient, to support the growing demands of our consumers, and to enable our team to focus on the transformation ahead of us,” BMW CEO Robert Engelhorn added.
Adcock, who founded Figure in 2022, has said he hopes to see his robots working in warehouses and logistics and sees them as the answer to what he has described as a labor crisis.
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Carmakers such as Honda, Toyota, and Hyundai have experimented with building their own humanoid robots to serve the public but have never deployed them to the car factory floor or mass-produced them.
Some humanoid robots are already being tested in the field. Agility Robotics is currently testing its Digit robot in Amazon warehouses and constructed a factory to mass produce its creations. The AI company Apptronik is also testing its Apollo robot in warehouses. Tesla unveiled its Optimus robot in 2022, but its functionality has been limited to folding clothes, leaving observers underwhelmed.