At last, a story about humanoid robots doing something other than backflips and hula hoops. There are videos in the story, and the robots need to be enclosed in a steel cage because they can’t detect humans, so…danger, Will Robinson (although that should be fairly easy to add).
The movements of the robots are perfunctory, at best - carrying a box of stuff from one production line to the next - but the plan owner says a human used to do it (why there wasn’t just a conveyor system eludes me), so this is an “actual replacement.”
Side note: not exactly humanoid: the knees are backwards, like a stork, but otherwise pretty similar.
When Humanoid Robots Come to a Small-Town Factory
Two-legged robots have taken over a job in a South Carolina auto parts plant. That’s just the start.
CHERAW, S.C.—Inside a [Schaeffler] auto-parts factory, a most unusual worker toils away.Stepping gingerly across the metal floor, it holds its four-fingered hands at chest level until it reaches its objective: a 25-pound basket of bearing components fresh from a stamping press.
The worker uncurls its claw-like fingers, daintily grips the basket by its edges and walks it over to a conveyor that will send it through an industrial washing machine. About a minute after it grabbed the first basket off a pallet, it returns to grab another.
So it goes for eight hours a day, basket after basket, pallet after pallet.
Gift link, if I’ve done it right.