Humanoid robots complete 11-month project at BMW plant

Two humanoid robots have completed an 11-month project at BMW Group Plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina, according to Figure AI, maker of the humanoids. 

The Figure 02 robots ran 10-hour shifts Monday through Friday with 1,250 hours of runtime, a press release says. It adds that the robots loaded more than 90,000 parts and contributed to the production of over 30,000 BMW X3 vehicles. 

“Following the release of Figure 03, we’re officially starting the retirement of Figure 02, our second-generation humanoid robot,” the release says. “With Figure 02’s return to HQ from BMW as part of our fleet-wide retirement, we would like to highlight key learnings that can be rolled into Figure 03 operational readiness.” 

While deployed at BMW, the robots performed what the release calls a “classic pick-and-place task” by loading sheet metal. The robot picked sheet metal parts from racks or bins and placed them on a welding fixture. A traditional six-axis industrial robot then welded and fed the parts into the main line. 

The robots had three goals to meet: cycle time, placement accuracy, and interventions. 

To meet the cycle time goal, the robot was required to load the sheet metal parts within 37 seconds and complete the entire task in 84 seconds. 

It was expected to have a 99% success rate per shift in loading/placing the sheet metal accurately. 

Figure AI also tracked the number of times a human must pause or reset the robot, with the goal being zero per shift. 

“The challenge of this use case is in balancing speed and precision — placing parts within a 5-millimeter tolerance in just 2 seconds,” the release says. “To meet this, our robot had to achieve precise yet adaptive locomotion, allowing rapid, accurate foot placement and real-time responsiveness to environmental changes. We also developed advanced hand-eye coordination algorithms and built field-calibration tools for consistent cross-robot performance.”

The release does not share data on how well the humanoids performed in meeting those goals. 

Figure AI says the project taught it how to improve the robot for its Figure 03 design. 

“Six months of daily runtime yielded invaluable insights for our mechanical and reliability teams,” the release says. “Across 1,250-plus operational hours, Figure 02 recorded minimal hardware failures while generating critical data that informed the build procedures, component architecture, and mechanical design of Figure 03.”

The release says that the robot’s forearm was the company’s top hardware failure point at BMW. It says the forearm subsystem is challenging due to its tight packaging and dexterity requirements, which necessitate 3 degrees of freedom and thermal constraints. 

“Figure 02’s forearm contained a microcontroller-based PCB that distributed communications between the main computer and the wrist actuators,” the release says. “For Figure 03, we completely re-architected the wrist electronics to eliminate both the distribution board and dynamic cabling. Each wrist’s motor controller now communicates directly with the main computer, reducing complexity, improving reliability, and simplifying thermal management.” 

Lessons from Figure 02 now live in Figure 3, the release says. 

BMW and Figure AI announced the deployment of autonomous humanoids at its South Carolina plant in January 2024. While the BMW release didn’t share the number of robots, BMW told Robot Report that it was starting with one robot for technical evaluation in the first stage. 

In August 2024, BMW announced that the robot had conducted a trial over several weeks at the Spartanburg plant, where it inserted sheet metal parts into specific fixtures to be assembled as part of a chassis. 

During the trial run, BMW said it learned what requirements must be met to integrate so-called multi-purpose robots into an existing production system. That includes learning how humanoid robots communicate with the system under real conditions. 

Fortune has accused Figure AI of inflating the role the robots have played at the BMW plant in the past. 

TechCrunch reported in June that Brett Adcock, Figure AI founder, made a public appearance at the Bloomberg Tech conference, where he didn’t provide specifics about the contractual relationship with BMW when asked. 

“We get a lot of value, and it’s really important that we need to figure out how to run robots every day,” Tech Crunch reports Adcock saying. “We get to see how well they perform. We get to track all the metrics.” 

Adcock also said during the event that Figure AI expects to manufacture and deploy roughly 100,000 units within four years.

BodyShop Booster’s Ryan Taylor provided a firsthand demonstration of AI during “AI Robots are coming: Humanoid meet and greet” during Society of Collision Repair Specialists’ Repairer Driven Education series at SEMA in Las Vegas earlier this month.

The interactive and hands-on class, showed attendees how AI can be leveraged in a body shop setting to streamline operations, enhance precision, and potentially change the guest experience with humanoid robots from international markets.

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Photo courtesy of Figure AI.