Humanoid's Robots to Step Into UK Industry with Schaeffler

Humanoid Robots, which according to Elon Musk will be the ‘biggest product of all time’, are soon to set their metallic foot on British soil. 

UK based robotics and AI company Humanoid, has just completed the development of its Proof Of Concept (POC) robot that can work on real world production lines. 

Humanoid took this next step into industrial automation with its pre-alpha robot in collaboration with Schaeffler, the German machine and car parts maker.

The robot was assigned with the task of continuously picking metallic rings from bins and transferring them to a buffer table while having to move between stations, which it completed with flying colours.

Humanoid robotics will play a crucial role in the production lines of the future, says Sebastian Jonas, Senior Vice President Advanced Production Technology at Schaeffler.

“Schaeffler plans to deploy a significant number of humanoid robots in its global manufacturing footprint. 

“The successful proof of concept (POC) with Humanoid is another important milestone on this path. 

“We look forward to making progress together in the next phase of the project leveraging our extensive expertise in manufacturing.” 

How are humanoids better than traditional automation systems?

Data from Schaeffler and Humanoid’s analysis show that traditional automation systems like robotic arms and cobots, due to their limited applications bring in less ROI. 

Humanoids are more flexible in the tasks they can perform, mainly due to their ability to generalise learned skills to perform similar operations.

The added advantage of mobility allows them to support multi machine operations offering a significant advantage over static machines.

They also possess autonomous error-correction capabilities, allowing for real-time adaptation.

Humanoid team’s POC model showcased the robot’s capability to learn new skills rapidly, fine-tune its performance on site and even transfer policies from controlled lab environments to real world scenarios with very minor adjustments. 

Robots like these are expected to raise productivity by 7%. 

“At Humanoid, early POCs are one of our key priorities because they allow us to iterate faster — to go into the real world as early as possible and learn what our future customers truly need, “ says Artem Sokolov, founder of Humanoid.

“This project proved that even at the pre-alpha stage, our platform can deliver tangible value in operational settings.

“We see high potential for more operational applications with humanoids at Schaeffler’s factories.”

Are humanoids the future?

Goldman Sachs research shows that humanoids are expected to become a US$38bn market by 2035. 

With the advancements in end-to-end AI, through which AI models train themselves, robotics is developing faster than previously estimated. 

This, combined with the lower cost of materials and large investments into the sector is fuelling this boom. 

Much further from a distant reality, humanoids are already making their way into real production lines as reports showed the multinational electronics giant Foxconn will deploy humanoids in their Houston plant to build Nvidia AI servers within 6 months. 

Tech giants are not shying away either with massive investments from Tesla, Meta, Apple and Alphabet into the humanoid industry. 

The collaboration between Humanoid and Schaeffler demonstrates that humanoids can already handle repetitive, high-precision factory tasks with autonomy and adaptability.

Investor interest clearly shows that we are headed into a humanoid future that could blur the boundaries between human and machine labour.