BMW is introducing humanoid robots, made by Hexagon Robotics, into European car manufacturing for the first time, with two units set to begin production work at its Leipzig factory this summer. The human-shaped "Aeon" robots are designed to fit into existing workflows alongside human workers, carrying out tasks such as feeding parts to tools and battery assembly, and are trained using AI techniques including teleoperation and reinforcement learning. While BMW sees humanoid robots as the future of automotive production — helping address labour shortages and repetitive or physically demanding tasks — analysts caution that the technology has been overhyped and that public expectations of robot capabilities often exceed reality.
