BMW is increasing its investigation of humanoid robotic employees at its factories. The automaker has simply introduced that it’ll trial a set of bodily AI bots made by Hexagon for the primary time at one in every of its European crops.
After about a year of training, BMW unleashed a fleet of robots made by Figure AI in its plant at Spartanburg, South Carolina, final yr as a part of a pilot program to see how the automatons would do in real-world manufacturing situations. In keeping with the corporate, that experiment went very well. The Figure 02 robots contributed to the manufacturing of over 30,000 BMW X3s by dealing with the exact positioning of sheet metallic that wanted to be welded. The bots executed this repetitive and bodily demanding job for 10 hours a day, 5 days every week. On the finish of the pilot program, which encompassed 1,250 working hours, the humanoid work crew had moved a complete of 90,000 elements and brought 1.2 million steps.
Now, BMW is bringing humanoids from a special producer to its Leipzig, Germany plant. The AEON bots are made by Zurich-based Hexagon, and had been unveiled in June of final yr. The machines are thought of “bodily AI” as a result of they’re outfitted with AI-based movement management and sensors that may consider their atmosphere and make impartial choices based mostly on what’s round. They will additionally be taught as they conduct numerous duties and replace their programming based mostly on what they encounter. You may get a great have a look at them within the following slickly produced video launched by the automaker.
Can a humanoid robotic be built-in underneath actual industrial situations? Our BMW iFACTORY strategy 🦾
AEON bots transfer by way of wheels on the backside of their legs and might attain speeds of as much as 2.4m/s (about 8 ft/s), weigh 60 kg(132 lb) every, have a human-like top of 165 cm (5.4 ft) , and might carry payloads of as much as 15 kg (33 lb) over the brief time period, and eight kg (17.6 lb) for prolonged durations of time. The humanoids are additionally outfitted with auto-swap performance in order that when their batteries drain after about 4 hours of use, they autonomously get new ones to maintain on rolling.
BMW says the bots will initially be put via their paces in quite a lot of duties on the Leipzig plant throughout a testing section and can finally settle in throughout a pilot program to assemble high-voltage batteries in addition to to help with the manufacturing of different elements.
“Our intention is to be a expertise chief and to combine new applied sciences into manufacturing at an early stage,” says BMW senior vice chairman, Michael Nikolaides. “Pilot initiatives assist us to check and additional develop using Bodily AI – that’s, AI‑enabled robots able to studying – underneath real-world industrial situations. The profitable first deployment of humanoid robots at our BMW Group plant in Spartanburg within the USA proves {that a} humanoid robotic can operate not solely underneath managed laboratory situations but additionally in an present automotive manufacturing atmosphere.”
Supply: BMW
