How Mercedes-Benz “hired” robots to work
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Mercedes-Benz has acquired Apollo humanoid robots. They will appear at the concern’s plant in Hungary and will work in test mode for now, the Financial Times writes, citing a company statement. Humanoid robots will be trusted with physically demanding, repetitive tasks, such as delivering components to assembly lines. Apollo was provided by the American company Apptronik: machines with mechanical heads, arms and legs are capable of lifting loads weighing up to 25 kg.
The use of such robots is still a rare case for the automotive industry, but it fits into the general trends, says Roman Zubko, editor-in-chief of the Dvizhok magazine: “Robotization and automation of production is, one might say, one of the global trends in the automotive industry. Many companies, in particular Chinese ones, quite widely use so-called dark workshops, in which there is no human presence at all. Without exception, all operations are performed by robots.
In this case, it is worth saying that, as many business publications note, this will be perhaps the first use of so-called humanoid robots in production.
As for fears that the machines will begin to take away jobs from someone, Mercedes directly says that they will be used for some physically complex and frequently repeated operations for which it is difficult to find suitable employees. So the trade unions, I think, will not be too opposed. Moreover, these robots will actually have slightly greater capabilities than ordinary people, in particular, lifting heavy loads.”
Apollo is not the only such humanoid robot on the market. One of its main competitors is Optimus from Tesla. The Chinese also have an analogue: their development GR-1 is capable of lifting weight twice as much as Apollo, namely 50 kg.
How much do these robots cost? And could they soon appear in Russian automobile factories? Vladimir Bely, managing partner of Alpha Robotics Venture, answered these questions for Kommersant FM: “In Russia, manufacturers themselves are still very skeptical about this. Almost no one wants to invest in developments, including non-state companies and financial development institutions that would help, for example, such startup projects.
The second point is that at one time, on the contrary, there were a lot of requests, that is, they perceived that robots, especially anthropomorphic ones, can do everything. But it turned out that they are quite difficult and expensive to create. The very factor that was used for dynamic balance systems, technical vision, positioning – everything would be quite difficult to implement. They thought it was easier to find a person, train him and hire him.
But nevertheless, I think that at some point AvtoVAZ will also think about how to introduce such robots into the production process. It is impossible to ignore global trends, and no one can do it.
However, the cost of such robots ranges from $100 thousand to several million dollars. In Russia, such a robot cost more than 12 million rubles. Such machines, in general, can really replace work, for example, on assembly on a conveyor belt, loading the same metal blanks into CNC machines and interacting with buttons, being such operators.
Two robots of this type were produced in the Russian Federation – AR-600, AR-601M. They are used for educational institutions and supplied to laboratories. FEDOR was created by the NPO Android Technology; it was a rescue robot. In general, he completed and even exceeded all stages of the DARPA Robotics Challenge. This also shows that in general we are not far behind, and are even ahead in some ways. But business is not yet ready to purchase such machines.”
Mercedes-Benz isn’t the only German big three interested in humanoid robots. BMW also expects to use them in factories. As Reuters reported, the concern entered into an agreement with the American startup Figure. He creates humanoid robots in collaboration with GPT chat developer Open AI.
Everything is clear with us – Telegram channel “Kommersant FM”.
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