A humanoid robot has just walked out of its production line on its own two legs, without being operated remotely.
The scene took place at a new XPENG facility, belonging to the Chinese manufacturer best known for its electric cars. The robot is called IRON. The company says it completed a first example on this line before having it walk autonomously as it exited. This milestone primarily marks the transition from laboratory-built prototypes to a method designed for rapid assembly-line production.
The IRON humanoid robot walks along its automated production line at XPENG.
Credit: XPENG.
Building humanoid robots in series requires repeatedly assembling numerous moving parts with precision. XPENG says it has automated more than 80% of the main operations on its new lines. To do so, the manufacturer is drawing on methods from its automotive business, particularly for quality control during production.
IRON retains a shape close to that of a person. Its body has 76 independent movement capabilities, known as degrees of freedom. Each of its hands has 21. These joints are intended to let it walk as well as perform finer gestures.
The robot also carries three chips designed by XPENG. Together, they provide up to 2,250 TOPS, a measure of the number of computing operations that can be performed each second. This power is used to run directly on the machine the artificial intelligence models responsible for interpreting its surroundings and controlling its movements.
This local autonomy has a practical consequence: IRON can perform certain tasks without a human operator controlling each of its movements remotely. That does not mean it already knows how to do everything. XPENG presents the machine as a platform that is expected to learn and gradually acquire new capabilities in real-world situations.
Current manufacturing is not yet mass production. The company plans to reach that stage by the end of 2026. The first robots will initially be used in its own stores and facilities, where their performance can be observed in an everyday environment rather than in a laboratory.
The project also benefits from substantial financial resources. At the end of August, XPENG’s robotics division raised more than 900 million dollars, or approximately 760 million euros at the current exchange rate. The group aims to develop its cars, autonomous systems, and robots in parallel by sharing some artificial intelligence technologies among these machines.
The real test will come in 2027. XPENG then plans to launch IRON commercially and begin the first deliveries in China and abroad. The specific uses offered to customers, the production rate, and the robot’s price have yet to be determined.