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BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time

press.bmwgroup.com

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Re: BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time

#51

Post by df2dfs »

georgeecollins wrote: post #47
df2dfs wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree and for me personally this is very easy to see and understand. Why do you think the vast majority of people fail to see it like this? Guys like Musk obvious hype it up as he now has tied the valuation of the firms he owns and operates to this story.

Because so much infrastructure is in humanoid form. If you can make something that can manipulate two hands on arms that are positioned and moved like human arms, you could just put that torso into a lot of situations to replace a human without a lot of retooling. That's the dream I think.

I personally think humans make the mistake of thinking that we must create objects that emulate oneself. Imagination is tough, I know.

Does the computer 'memory' behave identically like human memory? Of course not. Does it look like the 'memory' of a human? Again, of course not.

Re: BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time

#52

Post by cpursley »

baxtr wrote: post #25
tw-20260303-001 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's coming, next year, there will be a million of them.

On the moon or on Mars?

In the mountains of Iran and stepps of Ukraine, I fear… and before you downvote, consider that starlink are in both, already.

Re: BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time

#53

Post by nom »

fHr wrote: post #38
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might actually describe a pretty good implementation of an interface to SAP. I think pencil is more efficient than SAP.

true absolute dogshit software

that's a feature

Re: BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time

#54

Post by drnick1 »

Maxion wrote: post #23

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…

> I wish I was making this stuff up.

Lmao. Yes it's a pretty good summary of what happens in the corporate world, and not only in Germany.

Re: BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time

#55

Post by joe_the_user »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #11

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

It would be hard to believe that BMW doesn't have many industrial robots already deployed and in fact they do on a serious scale [1]. Now, to my mind, adding humanoid-robots to the existing mix of standard-robots and people seems not completely terrible.

The article's vacuous AI gloss language indeed makes it seem like they are indeed engaging in, crudely put, baloney. But your own language is weird here, like you don't realize robots are a standard thing in modern manufacturing. I mean, modern manufacturing "succeeds" massively using nonhumanoid robots at large scale.

[1] https://www.bmwgroup-werke.com/spartanburg/en/our-plant.html

Re: BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time

#56

Post by bentcorner »

georgeecollins wrote: post #47
df2dfs wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree and for me personally this is very easy to see and understand. Why do you think the vast majority of people fail to see it like this? Guys like Musk obvious hype it up as he now has tied the valuation of the firms he owns and operates to this story.

Because so much infrastructure is in humanoid form. If you can make something that can manipulate two hands on arms that are positioned and moved like human arms, you could just put that torso into a lot of situations to replace a human without a lot of retooling. That's the dream I think.

Installing humanoid robots in a factory is like using regexes to parse data.

It makes sense if it's a one-off but there are better solutions.

Maybe it does make sense for small scale businesses that need just a little automation? Like a humanoid robot could restock shelves and do inventory in a grocery store at night, and you wouldn't need to retrofit anything to be able to do that.

Large scale factories seems like the wrong use case for humanoid robots.

Re: BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time

#58

Post by ricardobeat »

torginus wrote: post #44
amelius wrote: post #9

Meanwhile China has dark factories.

I think this is a myth - Chinese factories don't seem to be automated to a higher degree than European ones, and in any case are still full of Kuka, Fanuc and ABB robots. I think there's a domestic brand or two that's gaining marketshare, but they're not there yet. There's a myth of Chinese high-tech (esp in cars), that is not to say their stuff isn't technologically advanced, but the characterization that Chinese te…

This take might have been true years ago, especially for cheaper makes, but modern EVs from china use high-quality components and designs that often surpass european automakers. The premium brands - Nio, Zeekr, Polestar, Lotus, etc - have design and R&D offices in Europe, and source parts from suppliers all over the world. Nio uses Nvidia Orin chips, Qualcomm SoCs, Brembo brakes, Bosch controllers, ZF suspension systems, Continental/Pirelli tires, and ClearMotion (in their flagship model); can't get any better than that.

The driving feel is definitely a thing, the chinese cars are very soft and 'boaty' which is not as desirable elsewhere. They are also on average much larger and heavier than their western counterparts, cities in China have road infrastructure built in the past 20-30 years with spacious lanes.

Re: BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time

#59

Post by eitally »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #11

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

Robots are widely deployed in manufacturing, just not humanoid robots. The biggest benefit of stationary robots is that their behavior is 100% predictable and they are always where the humans expect them to be. There are certain areas in factories which can be nearly 100% automated (pick & pull in warehouses, for example), but there are a lot of areas where, without a human in the loop, there are too many edge cases to reasonably expect humanoid-robots-as-replacements-for-humans to anticipate or react to.

(I have 15 years experience in high tech manufacturing, with most of that building test automation & manufacturing execution systems, and an advanced degree in operations research.)

Re: BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time

#60

Post by XorNot »

torginus wrote: post #35
dmix wrote: post #24

Seems to be this European robotics company https://robotics.hexagon.com/product/ https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/hexagon-robotics-ai-software-a...

My prediction is that by the time humanoid robots actually make it to the factory floor, they'll be pretty un-humanoid. 90% of car manufacturing is done by oldschool industrial robots, and I've had people point out that heavy use of industrial robots are basically unique to the car industry. You might see a robot arm here and there in other industries, but it's somewhat rare, usually its all purpose-built machines or…

Vertically upright humanoids have a lot going for them: they don't occupy a lot of floor space, they can pull an object right into their center of gravity to manipulate it, and because they're familiar they're relatively easy to prototype actions for because they're our actions.

People always asser without evidence that humanoid isn't the best design, but there's a paucity of alternatives that don't make some type of tradeoff: humanoid might not be the best at anything, but it's clearly very good at a lot of things.

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