Toyota plans to deploy 400,000 factory robots while insisting its mechanical workforce should coexist with humans rather than replace them.
According to Ars Technica, starting in 2028, the Japanese carmaker expects to spend about $6.42 billion annually upgrading factories with automation and robotics. Toyota wants 150,000 robots in its car plants and another 250,000 across group companies.
Workers are already training Toyota’s ELEY humanoid robots on assembly lines. Unlike the usual science-fiction android, ELEY gets around on wheels and uses two hands for manipulation tasks.
Human workers teach the machines jobs requiring precise hand movements by wearing “jigs” based on the robots’ fingers and are effectively teaching their shiny new colleagues exactly how they do their jobs.
Toyota executive vice president Hiroki Nakajima said the company wants “a world where robots coexist with humans, rather than replacing them.” The outfit has about 18,000 veteran workers spread across 60 factories worldwide, including 11 US manufacturing plants.
Toyota has not said how many robots it operates or what proportion of the planned 400,000 machines will be humanoids. The total includes conventional industrial machines as well as newer humanoid designs.
Industrial robots are hardly newcomers to car plants. Robotic arms have spent decades welding, painting and assembling vehicles, while mobile machines shuffle components around factories without demanding tea breaks.
Humanoids are a newer bet as carmakers hope general-purpose machines can switch between different jobs and work in factories originally designed around human bodies rather than requiring dedicated robotic work cells.
Some irritating details still separate the demonstration videos from armies of robot workers. Safety, AI reliability, hardware performance and whether humanoids are cheaper than paying people remain unresolved problems.
Carmakers have plenty of reasons to automate as factories are retooled for electric vehicles and increasingly computer-heavy cars. Skilled labour shortages and ageing workforces are adding pressure, while unions remain understandably interested in what all this means for jobs and wages.
Toyota is not alone in handing robots factory badges. Hyundai plans to begin deploying Boston Dynamics Atlas humanoids in 2028 and wants as many as 25,000 working across Hyundai and Kia factories during the following years.
Boston Dynamics opened a robot training centre at Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America in Georgia on 21 September. Atlas machines there are being trained to sequence automotive parts and place components in the correct order for assembly, presumably while everyone continues repeating the bit about coexistence.
