Overview

• BMW has signed a commercial agreement with Figure, a robotics startup, to deploy humanoid robots at its manufacturing plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
• The robots, known as Figure 1, are designed to perform various tasks in the manufacturing process, potentially taking over dangerous, tedious, and repetitive tasks from human workers.
• Figure 1 robots are capable of learning new tasks by watching videos, as demonstrated by the robot learning to make a cup of coffee using a Keurig machine after approximately 10 hours of training.
• The deployment of the robots is expected to increase productivity and safety, allowing BMW employees to focus on higher-value assignments that require human skills and oversight.
• The exact tasks the robots will perform at the BMW factory have not yet been announced, but training has already begun for the staged deployment.