151–160 of 275 posts
Let me first comment that this is just another publicity stunt and that there will be no useful humanoids in BMW factories in the near future. Then I will read TFA and get back here.
I don’t know which is worse, your comment or the original article.
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 whi…
That's the fundamental reason they're using humanoid robots - industrial robots have a hard time holding pencils.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> if you've ever driven a German car, you'll realize that the car was built for engineers and not for end users -- weird little user-hostile features pop up everywhere I drive a German car, all be it one from 2015, I don’t recognise this statement at all. I find it quite well designed. This sounds more like over generalised FUD to me.
I agree. Parent comment is making extremely generalized statements, about German cars with overconfidence. There’s not a single “German” car, it’s a huge ecosystem of brands like VW (Audi, Porsche), BMW, Mercedes. I’m quite sure they don’t have the single “user-hostile” interface.
BMW really needs to change its strategy to build cars for the future ( battery electric vehicles ) and stop churning out all those heavy diesel SUVs.
Because it doesn't matter how efficient you produce something, if it is the wrong thing you produce. Actually producing the wrong product highly efficiently makes matters even worse. It's like running in the wrong direction, but faster.
I still don’t understand how this can be considered cheaper or more productive than using a human. I’m all for automation in industry, but the "human simulation" approach (where a robot mimics a human on a production line instead of using a process optimized for machine operation) just doesn’t make sense to me.
I still don’t understand how this can be considered cheaper or more productive than using a human. I’m all for automation in industry, but the "human simulation" approach (where a robot mimics a human on a production line instead of using a process optimized for machine operation) just doesn’t make sense to me.
Employees cost roughly 70-120K per year. A lot of work in automotive is skilled work that pays relatively well. So, the economic case is easy to understand.
That's why there are lots of companies trying to produce humanoid robots. If they get good enough, lots of companies would buy them. A humanoid robot costing about 100K that can work around the clock (minus charging, battery swaps, servicing, etc.) doing work that otherwise would be done by a person could earn itself back in well under a year. Maybe it will cost a bit more or a bit less.
Will they be able to do anything? Not right away probably. But they'll probably be able to do useful things which means people don't need to do these things and can do more valuable things with their time.
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 whi…
Sometimes this is because of red tape and not because of software. I’ve run into many situations where you can log into the system and download a spreadsheet from the web interface, but the equivalent API hasn’t been configured (or has been deliberately disabled).
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 whi…
There is your problem right there. A family member worked for a large German company which used in-house developed software for exchanging and preparing lab reports for customers. The software worked well since the 90ies, was perfectly tailored to the company, and the people writing it were in the same building and could ship bug fixes within hours. Everyone was happy. Around 2015, someone in management had the idea to move the entire process to a customized off-the-shelf SAP product because of . The software engineers were in effect degraded to administrators. The new system missed so many edge cases of the lab process that they had to fall back to pen, paper and phone. Customer complaints and employee turnover started to skyrocket immediately afterwards.
I still don’t understand how this can be considered cheaper or more productive than using a human. I’m all for automation in industry, but the "human simulation" approach (where a robot mimics a human on a production line instead of using a process optimized for machine operation) just doesn’t make sense to me.
Most manufacturing operations have a long tail of stuff that is done by people because it's just not worth buying/designing a specialized machine for. That's exactly the stuff that people do currently that humanoid robots might step in and do cheaper. Employees cost roughly 70-120K per year. A lot of work in automotive is skilled work that pays relatively well. So, the economic case is easy to understand. That's why…
Now they can produce even more cars nobody wants. BMW really needs to change its strategy to build cars for the future ( battery electric vehicles ) and stop churning out all those heavy diesel SUVs. Because it doesn't matter how efficient you produce something, if it is the wrong thing you produce. Actually producing the wrong product highly efficiently makes matters even worse. It's like running in the wrong direct…
Almost half a million sold in 2025 (out of 2.5 million).