Humanoid robots 'the future' of car making, says BMW

Humanoid robots 'the future' of car making, says BMWJust nowShareSaveAdd as preferred on GoogleSean McManusTechnology ReporterBMWAeon can work for three hours before needing to swap its batteryFor the first time, BMW will use humanoid robots for car manufacturing in Europe.Two robots, made by Hexagon Robotics, are planned to work in production from the summer. They're currently in a test deployment at the Leipzig factory."This will be the future of automotive production," says Michael Nikolaides, head of process management and digitalisation at BMW.Robot arms and other automation have been used by the car industry for decades. So why the move to human-shaped robots?"If you have a humanoid form, you can pretty much set it to any workplace where a human is working today because it has the same size and the same capabilities," says Nikolaides.The cost of robots has fallen while it remains expensive to redesign the assembly line. As a result, it's more cost-effective to use robots that fit in with existing human processes."When a robot costs 17 million, you'd re-organise your factory around the robot, but it doesn't anymore," says Bill Ray, distinguished VP analyst at Gartner."So now you want to fit it into your existing way of working."Named Aeon, the Hexagon robot is shaped like a person and stands 1.65m (5ft 5in) tall, weighing 60kg (9 stone 6lbs).They have a top speed of 2.4m/second and can carry 15kg for short periods, or 8kg continuously.Aeon is equipped with 21 sensors including cameras, radar, a microphone, and force and torque sensors for manipulation.At BMW the robots were trained using a combination of teleoperation (sensors on humans) and simulation in a digital twin of the factory using software from Nvidia.The robot in the simulation was given a task and repeatedly simulated it to identify the most promising solutions, an approach called reinforcement learning.Teleoperation was used for...