First OpenAI-Powered Humanoid Robot Deployed at BMW Assembly Plant

Even as the corporate world is figuring out the impact of AI on white color jobs, one had thought factory jobs were safe from it, at least for now. However, it has happened faster than expected.

For the first time, a new humanoid robot powered by OpenAI algorithms and manufactured by California robotics firm, Figure, has taken up a shop floor role in the vehicle assembly line at BMW’s Spartanburg plant in South Carolina.

Founded in 2022 by social entrepreneur Brett Adcock, Figure had announced in January this year a deal with BMW to deploy fully autonomous humanoid robots at the company’s plant. 

Figure announced early July on its X (formerly Twitter) handle it had deployed Figure 01, a humanoid robot, at the BMW Spartanburg plant. Figure 01 is powered by neural networks that map pixels from facial cameras into full actions. The machine learning language developed by OpenAI converts this data into movements.    

Figure 01 is a 5’ 3” humanoid weighing 132 pounds and capable of working non-stop for five hours on a single battery charge. The fully autonomous, self-correcting and self-learning humanoid is currently working on the sheet metal plant to ensure precise placement of the sheets within tolerances tighter than 1 cm.  

While single-purpose robots proliferate factory shopfloors, particularly in the automotive industry including in India, the deployment of a general-purpose robot or humanoid is unique and opens up immense potential for realizing untapped opportunities.

The market for general-purpose robots is expected to grow exponentially in the coming years with the size being put anywhere between $3.2 billion to over $30 billion by 2030.

Goldman Sachs perhaps has the most aggressive projection estimating the market at $38 billion by 2035, up more than sixfold from its previous projection of $6 billion.   

“AI progress surprised us the most,” the Goldman Sachs researchers said in a recent report referring to advances such as robotic large language models (LLMs) — a key reason for the forecast change.

The fast pace of humanoid robot development is also happening with the mushrooming of startups with more funding easily now available after the advent of Genrative AI.  

For instance, in February 2024, Figure, received funding of $675 million from investors including Nvidia, Jeff Bezos, OpenAI, and Microsoft to accelerate the development of its humanoid robot. Likewise, OpenAI had pumped in $23.5 million in another startup 1X in March 2023, for the development of its Bipedal Humanoid Robot NEO in a Series A2 funding round.

Likewise, technology companies are increasingly investing in focused projects for humanoid robots. The NVIDIA Project GR00T announced in March this year is one such initiative.

Some of the areas where humanoid robots are being deployed include surveillance and security to detect unauthorized intrusion and medical research and space exploration apart from areas that are hazardous to human life.