[HN Gopher] BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in...
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       BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for
       the first time
        
       Author : JeanKage
       Score  : 22 points
       Date   : 2026-03-04 21:11 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.press.bmwgroup.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.press.bmwgroup.com)
        
       | dataviz1000 wrote:
       | Here is a 60 Minutes piece showing Boston Dynamics Atlas working
       | in a car factory in the United States.
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6ISdRkS37I
        
         | u1hcw9nx wrote:
         | Hyundai vs BMW, where is Tesla?
        
           | tw-20260303-001 wrote:
           | It's coming, next year, there will be a million of them.
        
           | simondotau wrote:
           | Tesla beat Hyundai and BMW to this meaningless announcement a
           | year ago, and have already progressed from that to the
           | inevitable _"oh yeah, this doesn't actually work yet."_
           | 
           | Give Hyundai and BMW time.
        
       | downrightmike wrote:
       | How they work? Without indication
        
         | lifestyleguru wrote:
         | They communicate through tailing each other and flashing bright
         | lights from behind.
        
       | givemeethekeys wrote:
       | That's excellent! I look forward to much cheaper cars now that
       | the robots will be making them for the masses.
        
         | Flavius wrote:
         | Oh, absolutely. Because history clearly shows that when multi-
         | billion dollar corporations save money on labor, they
         | immediately pass those savings directly to the consumer.
        
       | Zqwlpaj wrote:
       | It is a pilot project. German pilot projects rarely go anywhere.
       | If this succeeds against all odds, I hope for BMW that the robots
       | are buying cars, too.
        
         | notahacker wrote:
         | Yeah. Feels kind of insignificant considering the amount of
         | non-humanoid robots they've used on production lines for the
         | last few decades and lack of any claims to be "fully
         | autonomous" or for the humanoid robots to be performing
         | particularly advanced tasks
        
         | s3p wrote:
         | [delayed]
        
       | amelius wrote:
       | Meanwhile China has dark factories.
        
         | weinzierl wrote:
         | In a sense BMW has factories in China too (through Brilliance).
         | I once heard the story that they built a 1:1 clone of the
         | Dingolfing plant there.
         | 
         | The owner family did the right thing at the right time. If the
         | Europe and US business tanks they will be fine. BMW as a brand
         | not necessarily.
        
       | pinkmuffinere wrote:
       | I think this is going to be bad for BMW, and bad for the current
       | robotics-summer. I _hope_ that's not the case, I'd love for
       | robotics to get deployed more widely in manufacturing. But I'm
       | pretty sure it will be. I think the chances of meaningful success
       | would be higher with non-humanoid robotics
        
         | krona wrote:
         | This is top-tier vagueposting.
        
       | r33b33 wrote:
       | So their cars will get cheaper, right... right???
        
       | moogly wrote:
       | Will they dance? I've yet to see someone demo a humanoid robot
       | doing something useful. Clearly, making them dance can't be that
       | difficult.
        
       | javiramos wrote:
       | According to Figure, their robots had already been deployed in
       | production
        
       | ge96 wrote:
       | Not sure what the drawers are on the robot but one of the
       | humanoid robots I saw changed its own battery that was pretty
       | cool (I think it had 2).
        
       | Maxion wrote:
       | Whenever I hear german companies mention digitalisation, I get
       | reminded that they still use pen and pencil in production
       | environments to log data, pass those sheets to secreteries who
       | enter the data into legacy systems so data analysts can enter it
       | into another system that then has an integration with SAP. Data
       | from SAP then flows onwards to some buzzword filled Azure product
       | that costs a few million a month from which someone downloads an
       | xls file and uploads it to Tableau where they run some simple
       | calculations. Someone else downloads it as an xls and manually
       | writes (not copy pastes) the numbers into a power point
       | presentation and makes graphs by drawing shapes. This is then
       | presented at some bi-monthly meeting.
       | 
       | I wish I was making this stuff up.
        
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       (page generated 2026-03-04 23:00 UTC)