Dive Brief:
- Mercedes-Benz and robotics company Apptronik have agreed to deploy humanoid robots at the automaker’s manufacturing facilities, Apptronik announced Friday.
- As part of the agreement, both companies will study the potential use cases for Apollo humanoid robots in logistics, such as delivering parts to assembly line workers.
- The robots can help automate tasks that are physically demanding, repetitive or hazardous for humans. They can also address labor shortages by performing less desirable tasks.
Dive Insight:
Advances in robotics technology can help make workplaces safer for humans and increase efficiency. In January, BMW announced a similar project at its manufacturing facilities in South Carolina. Tesla is also considering deploying its AI-powered, humanoid “Tesla Bot” in its factories to work alongside humans.
"Mercedes plans to use robotics and Apollo for automating some low skill, physically challenging, manual labor – a model use case which we'll see other organizations replicate in the months and years to come,” Apollo CEO Jeff Cardenas said in the press release.
Apptronik was founded in 2016. The company spun out of the Human Centered Robotics Lab at the University of Texas at Austin. The humanoid Apollo robot resulted from Apptronik’s experience building over 10 previous robots, including the Valkyrie robot for NASA.
The Apollo robot is around the size of a human worker, standing 5 foot 8 inches tall and weighing 160 pounds. It can lift objects weighing up to 55 pounds and work alongside humans in industrial settings, performing more physically demanding tasks in factories. The robot can operate with its onboard battery pack for up to four hours.
“This is a new frontier and we want to understand the potential both for robotics and automotive manufacturing to fill labor gaps in areas such as low skill, repetitive and physically demanding work and to free up our highly skilled team members on the line to build the world's most desirable cars,” Jörg Burzer, who’s in charge of the Production, Quality & Supply Chain Management division, said in the press release.
