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By Victoria Waldersee
BERLIN (Reuters) - Mercedes-Benz is trialling using humanoid robots made by U.S.-based company Apptronik for tasks such as moving components to the production line or carrying out quality checks, the latest automaker to experiment with robots in manufacturing.
The German company has invested a low double-digit million-euro sum in Apptronik, a Texas-based firm founded in 2016 that is racing with the likes of Tesla and Nvidia-backed Figure AI to scale up production of AI-powered human-like robots.
A handful of Apptronik's "Apollo" robots have been trained for specific tasks within Mercedes-Benz's production process through so-called 'teleoperation', where the robot is operated remotely by humans and learns the tasks it performs, with the goal of eventually being able to repeat them autonomously.
The carmaker is testing use of the robots at its Digital Factory Campus in Marienfelde, Berlin, and in Kecskemet, Hungary, and plans to bring them to other sites, production chief Joerg Burzer said in a roundtable with journalists in Berlin on Tuesday.
"I'd like to see us find applications in areas where we face labour shortages - but of course first for the repetitive tasks, and then hazardous ones," Burzer added.
"The cost will be decisive... when costs reach a two-digit thousand-dollar sum - which is absolutely possible - it will become very interesting," he said, without giving a timeframe or the current cost per robot.
Carmakers including Honda, Hyundai, and BMW have experimented with humanoid robots to perform repetitive tasks that could be dangerous or tedious, though none has yet deployed them in manufacturing at large scale.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said last April he "guessed" the Tesla robot, called Optimus, could perform tasks in the factory by year-end, but has not since provided an update.
(Reporting by Victoria Waldersee. Editing by Mark Potter)
