Humanoid robots in factories: 16 deployments sorted into production, pilot and announced

As of September 28, 2026, only a handful of humanoid robots are doing disclosed, paid work in factories and warehouses, and no maker has published a fleet above a few dozen units at any single site. The clearest records are Figure’s 11-month Figure 02 run at BMW’s Spartanburg plant (1,250+ hours, 90,000+ parts loaded) and Agility’s Digit, which has logged 65,000+ operating hours across customer sites including GXO, Schaeffler and Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada.

Why it matters: company announcements routinely blur a signed agreement, a pilot and a production deployment. Sorting them by what has actually been disclosed shows how thin the evidence for humanoid labour still is, and which buyers are paying.

Are humanoid robots actually working in factories today?

Yes, but in single-digit or low double-digit numbers per site, on one or two narrow tasks. The International Federation of Robotics said on September 21, 2026 that carmakers, among the earliest buyers, are running pilots with single-digit or sometimes double-digit numbers of robots per site, and that many of the roughly 7,000 humanoids sold in 2025 went to research institutions and to companies gathering training data (our report on the IFR count). Every task disclosed below is materials handling: loading parts, moving totes, sorting components into sequencing trolleys. None is assembly.

We sort deployments into four statuses. Production means robots doing work on a live line or in a live warehouse under a commercial contract. Commercial pilot means a signed commercial agreement to trial the robot, with scale-up undecided. Internal or pre-deployment covers a maker testing its own robots in its own plants, or a customer’s training site. Announced means a named partner and no disclosed work. Where payment terms were not disclosed, we say so.

Which humanoid deployments are in production, and which are pilots?

The table lists every factory or warehouse deployment we could confirm against a company release or a reputable outlet, as of September 28, 2026. Metrics are company-reported unless stated.

Company	Robot	Customer and site	Status	Disclosed metric	Source date
Figure AI	Figure 02	BMW Plant Spartanburg, South Carolina (body shop, sheet-metal loading)	Production run, completed after 11 months	1,250+ hours; 90,000+ parts; 30,000+ X3s; 10-hour shifts, Mon–Fri	Nov 19, 2025
Figure AI	Figure 03	BMW Spartanburg logistics (sorting parts into sequencing trolleys)	Live deployment; fleet size undisclosed	None disclosed	Jun 25, 2026
Agility Robotics	Digit	GXO, Flowery Branch, Georgia	Production (multi-year RaaS agreement, June 2024)	100,000 totes at ~98% on-task accuracy	Sep 15, 2026
Agility Robotics	Digit	Schaeffler plants	Commercial agreement plus strategic investment	Unit count undisclosed	Nov 13, 2024
Agility Robotics	Digit	Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada, Cambridge and Woodstock, Ontario	Production (RaaS agreement after pilot)	Unit count undisclosed	Feb 19, 2026
Agility Robotics	Digit	Mercado Libre, San Antonio, Texas	Deployment announced; terms undisclosed	None disclosed	Dec 10, 2025
Agility Robotics	Digit	Amazon	Testing	None disclosed	Jun 24, 2026
Apptronik	Apollo	Mercedes-Benz, Berlin-Marienfelde and Kecskemét	Commercial pilot (agreement Mar 2024); Mercedes took a stake in Mar 2025	None disclosed	Mar 18, 2025
Apptronik	Apollo	GXO	Multi-phase R&D programme	None disclosed	Jun 20, 2024
UBTech	Walker S2	Customers named: BYD, Dongfeng Liuzhou, Geely, FAW-Volkswagen Qingdao, Audi FAW, BAIC, Foxconn, SF Express	Paid orders; deliveries in phases	RMB 800M+ orders in 2025; 921 full-size humanoids sold in H1 2026	Nov 17, 2025
Boston Dynamics	Atlas	Hyundai Metaplant America, Georgia (RMAC)	Pre-deployment training; line work targeted 2028	25,000-unit Hyundai/Kia plan (target)	Sep 21, 2026
Tesla	Optimus	Tesla’s own factories	Internal only, supervised areas	Several hundred built a week in August (reported)	Sep 25, 2026
Xiaomi	CyberOne	Xiaomi EV factory, nut-fastening station	Internal	Task success 90% to 98% over ~4 months	Sep 3, 2026
Walden Robotics	General-purpose robots (form not disclosed)	Toyota plant, North America	Production since Feb 2026 (company-reported)	Pilot to real work in under two months	Jul 15, 2026
XPeng	IRON	XPeng stores and campuses first	Announced; mass production targeted end-2026	Deliveries planned 2027	Sep 8, 2026
Persona AI	Welding humanoid	HD Hyundai (shipyards); POSCO	Partnerships announced	No units or contract values disclosed	Aug 17, 2026

Two leads we checked did not make the table. A claim that Digit runs at nine customer sites could not be matched to an Agility statement; Agility says only “numerous” sites. UBTech pilots at NIO and Zeekr were widely reported in 2024 but are not named in UBTech’s November 2025 customer list, so we have left them out.

What have the longest-running humanoid deployments achieved?

Figure’s BMW run is the most detailed public record. Figure said on November 19, 2025 that its Figure 02 deployment ran 10-hour shifts, Monday to Friday, loading sheet-metal parts for welding, and logged 1,250+ hours of runtime, 90,000+ parts loaded and a contribution to 30,000+ BMW X3s over 11 months. The stated requirement was an 84-second total cycle with 37 seconds of load time, and more than 99% placement success per shift; Figure did not publish the achieved cycle time. BMW then moved Figure 03 into logistics, where it picks unsorted components from larger containers into sequencing trolleys for just-in-sequence delivery. BMW’s June 25, 2026 release does not describe it as a pilot, and does not say how many robots are involved.

Agility has the longest tenure and the most customers. Digit 4 has logged more than 65,000 hours across sites in North America, and at GXO’s Flowery Branch facility it passed 100,000 totes at about 98% on-task accuracy. Agility’s agreement with Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada, announced February 19, 2026, is a Robots-as-a-Service contract that followed a pilot. The company has since unveiled Digit 5, backed by more than $300 million of multi-year orders that its listing filings describe as milestone-contingent. The Robot Report noted Agility booked $1.8 million of net sales in 2025, which is the scale of humanoid revenue behind the best-documented deployments.

The carmakers testing their own machines report less. Xiaomi’s 90%-to-98% success figure on a single fastening station is company-reported (our IFA report). Tesla, which builds the most units, has no external customer: Electrek reported on September 25, 2026, citing The Information, that most Optimus units are used internally for testing, training and data collection, in tightly controlled, supervised areas (our Optimus production tracker).

Why do so few humanoid pilots become fleets?

The buyers want scale guarantees the makers cannot yet give. Persona AI told IEEE Spectrum that shipyard customers prefer vendors who can field hundreds of robots at one location; its HD Hyundai and POSCO partnerships have no disclosed unit counts. Hyundai has set 2028 for Atlas on Metaplant lines and 2030 for component assembly, which is why the new Atlas training centre in Georgia is a pre-deployment site rather than a production one.

Three patterns hold across the table. First, the most advanced deployments are captive or investor-linked: Mercedes-Benz and Schaeffler invested in their suppliers, Toyota co-led Walden’s $300 million seed, and Tesla, Xiaomi and XPeng deploy in their own plants. Second, fleet sizes are almost never disclosed, which makes utilisation impossible to judge from outside. Third, China has the orders and the volume, with UBTech’s Liuzhou plant sized for 10,000 units a year, but the fewest site-level metrics.

The test for the next twelve months is simple. A deployment graduates when a customer names the fleet size, the task and the uptime, and then orders more. As of September 28, 2026, only Figure at BMW and Agility at GXO have published enough to be judged at all.