Boston Dynamics opened a humanoid robot training centre inside the Metaplant America plant near Savannah. Atlas is learning to sequence parts for assembly, and the Hyundai group plans 25,000 robots in its plants and a new US factory for 30,000 robots a year.
- The RMAC centre is in its first phase; in 2027 it moves into a building about ten times larger.
- Atlas's job today is logistics and sequencing parts before assembly; assembly itself is a 2030 goal.
- 25,000 robots and a factory for 30,000 a year are plans of the Hyundai group, without a firm date.
Sequencing parts before assembly is a job where order is everything: every part has to be in the right place before it reaches assembly.
That is exactly where Hyundai puts Atlas first. Not on assembly, but on the preparation before it.
Plan and fact
The fact is that the robots are in the plant and learning. Everything with a number next to it is a plan: twenty-five thousand, thirty thousand a year, assembly by 2030. Nice numbers nobody has yet seen working.
Anyone who has prepared a big event knows a rehearsal in an empty hall tells you nothing about the night with an audience. Here the real part is the small one - sequencing parts, in phase one, in one plant.
The test, as we see it, is 2027, when the centre moves: that is when we will see whether the robots sequence parts at the pace of the real line.