Toyota Motor will phase in 400,000 humanoid robots across its global production bases, timing the rollout to renovations and rebuilding of its plants worldwide to create an environment where the machines work alongside human staff.
Toyota will deploy the humanoid robot "Eli" at plants undergoing renovation or reconstruction around the world, Japan's Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported on the 18th. Eli has two fingers, draws power from a battery or an electric cable, and moves on wheels rather than walking on two legs. It weighs 50 kilograms.
The rollout is expected to begin in 2028 or later. From that point, Toyota and its group affiliates plan to spend 1 trillion yen a year upgrading aging plants worldwide. Toyota itself will introduce 150,000 robots and group affiliates 250,000, in step with the overhaul of factory equipment.
Notably, the robots will accumulate work data on the floor alongside veteran staff known as "takumi," meaning master craftsman. Toyota employs 18,000 takumi workers at its 60 plants worldwide. The company aims to put the robots into practical use early by drawing on its Toyota Production System and on shop floors where the machines can be tested. Devised after World War II, the Toyota Production System is the automaker's signature management approach, pursuing extreme efficiency by eliminating all waste on the production floor, minimizing inventory and making only what is needed when it is needed. Within that efficient framework, training data for the robots is expected to pile up quickly.
Eli will learn delicate tasks such as picking parts out of one box and placing them in another, or folding cloth. It searches for the best way to do a job as it learns on its own. Some units have already been placed on parts of factory production lines, where a worker wears a device modeled on Eli's fingers and repeats routine tasks for the robot to learn from.
At a technology briefing for investors held earlier by Toyota's European operations, a robot demonstrated folding a T-shirt. After learning from 1,500 repetitions over two weeks, it could fold the shirt almost precisely, according to the company. Toyota also plans to transmit the data to robots stationed at plants worldwide so they can learn the same tasks. Beyond humans teaching robots, the company wants to build an environment in which robots teach new employees how to do the work.
"Robots are not meant to replace humans," Toyota Executive Vice President Hiroki Nakajima said. "We are aiming for a world where they coexist with people."
