Humanoid Artificial Intelligence-powered robots will be part of the Mercedes-Benz move to ‘digital production’ of vehicles and will communicate through chatbots.
Mercedes-Benz has announced tests of advanced human-like robots – powered by artificial intelligence – as it ‘digitises’ the way it builds cars.
Robots powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) from Apptronik – a Texas, United States-based automation and robotics company having developed robots for NASA (North American Space Agency) – have been installed for testing at the car maker’s innovation hub in Berlin-Marienfeld, Germany.
It follows other car companies including Hyundai Motor Group – owner of Hyundai and Kia brands as well as robot-making firm Boston Dynamics – which installed AI-powered robots designed to interact with human workers at its state-of-the-art Singapore facility in 2023.
In 2024 Japan’s Mazda invested in AI-focused UK tech company Secondmind aiming to accelerate electric car development.
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According to Apptronik, the AI ‘Apollo’ robots Mercedes-Benz is now testing are “the first commercial humanoid robot that was designed for friendly interaction, mass manufacturability, high payloads and safety”.
Apollo stands at 5’8” (172cm), weighs 72.6kg with its swappable battery pack enabling a claimed four-hour run time. Apollo can also carry 25kg, and is modular, so can move along a production line or be fixed.
It also brings features including an AI-based ‘Digital Factory Chatbot Ecosystem’, which enables the robots to interact with each other, external machinery and parts of the assembly line.
“AI takes over the tasks we usually enjoy less, giving us time to focus on real innovation, creativity and value-adding activities,” Katrin Lehmann, Chief Information Officer of Mercedes-Benz Group said in a statement.
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“I’m convinced that it makes a significant contribution to business success when applied strategically and executed pragmatically.”
Mercedes-Benz says the ecosystem allows human employees to access production databases and ask Apollo robots best-practice methods for manufacturing processes, enabling quick and immediate answers in multiple languages.
“Instead of laborious, manual root-cause analysis, the engineers rely on AI agents from a virtual data-science team.
“These AI agents quickly and reliably analyse available data, identify patterns and anomalies and offer well-founded analyses and suggested solutions at the touch of a button for real efficiency gains in production.”
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Apollo robots will be part of Mercedes-Benz’s developing ‘MO360 production system’ which combines software and data for a digitised manufacturing.
The first vehicle to benefit from MO360 as part of the ‘Mercedes-Benz Operating System’ (MB.OS) was the 2026 Mercedes-Benz CLA revealed in March.
As part of the announcement, Mercedes-Benz has said it would make a “low double-digit-million-euro investment” in Apptronik, which was founded in 2016.
The German car maker was part of a $US430 million ($AU676 million) funding round by Apptronik, which also has a strategic partnership with Google DeepMind AI to develop humanoid robots.
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