New wheeled humanoid robot learns factory jobs in a month, reports 95% success rate

Swiss startup Embodied AI has unveiled AIR, a two-armed mobile robot designed to work alongside factory employees without requiring a safety cage. The company said AIR initially operates under remote supervision before learning to perform assigned tasks independently within about a month.

Embodied AI reported an average task success rate of 95 percent across paid manufacturing pilots, including deployments with companies in the consumer electronics and automotive sectors.

“Safety and reliability are non-negotiable requirements of physical AI to enter the real world at scale. These are the principles that guided the design of AIR,” said Francesco Stella, co-founder and CEO of Embodied AI, in a statement.

Tendon-driven humanoid

AIR is a two-armed mobile robot designed to perform manufacturing tasks alongside factory workers without requiring a conventional safety cage.

Developed by a 25-person team spun out of the Swiss technical university EPFL, the robot combines a torso, two lightweight arms, and a wheeled base. Unlike conventional industrial robots that rely on rigid structures and external safety barriers, AIR uses a compliant mechanical design intended to reduce the risk of injury during accidental contact.

The robot’s architecture centers on keeping heavy components inside its torso while using a tendon-driven mechanism to operate its arms. Cables transmit movement from the motors to the arms, reducing the mass of the moving components. This arrangement allows the arms to remain lightweight and give way when they encounter an obstacle or make contact with a person.

The design is intended to address a major limitation of conventional factory automation. Industrial robotic arms are often heavy and rigid, making them difficult to deploy in workspaces shared directly with people. As a result, many installations require physical barriers or light curtains to separate machines from employees. AIR instead relies on mechanical compliance and a mass distribution that keeps heavier components away from the robot’s moving limbs.

The only specific mechanical figures disclosed so far concern the arm. According to an investor description, the tendon-driven unit weighs approximately 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) and can lift to 5 kilograms (11 pounds). The company has not yet published AIR’s overall dimensions, weight, reach, battery capacity, or maximum payload.

Another central feature is its approach to learning manufacturing tasks. AIR initially operates through teleoperation, with a remote human operator controlling the robot during its first shifts. These operations generate training data that the company’s AI system uses to learn the assigned task. Embodied AI says the robot can transition to autonomous operation within approximately one month, allowing it to take over work that initially required human supervision.

Targets factory automation

The company is not starting with an entirely untested software platform. AIR uses the same AI stack already deployed in a two-armed robotic cell operating on a customer’s production line. The company has used this system in paid manufacturing pilots with a consumer electronics manufacturer and an automotive and industrial technology supplier.

Embodied AI reported that an average task success rate of 95 percent across these deployments. However, it has not disclosed how many tasks it evaluated, how long the trials ran, or how it calculated the success rate. The company also said that, depending on the application, a single AIR unit could handle workloads equivalent to as many as three workers per shift.

The robot’s initial deployment model combines human supervision with progressive automation rather than requiring complete autonomy before entering a factory. This allows manufacturers to use the machine for productive work while its AI system gathers operational data. The approach also gives the company an opportunity to refine task-specific capabilities using information collected in actual manufacturing environments rather than relying exclusively on laboratory demonstrations.

Although it is described as a humanoid, AIR does not have legs or a bipedal walking system. Its wheeled platform provides mobility around factory workspaces, while its upper body and two arms allow it to interact with equipment and handle objects. This configuration places it closer to a class of mobile manipulation robots designed for industrial applications than to full-size, legged humanoids.

The company has not disclosed a price or delivery schedule, but says it will begin accepting orders following the robot’s unveiling at Humanoid Europe 2026 in Munich.