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Humanoid robot deployments

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Humanoid robot deployment refers to the placement of full-size or general-purpose humanoid robots into real operating environments: factories, warehouses, retail floors, research laboratories, and public exhibitions. As of mid-2026, the defining reality of the field is that these machines are not yet sold and distributed the way cars, forklifts, or industrial arms are. Almost every documented real-world presence is a pilot, a field test, a research placement, or a preordered product awaiting delivery, rather than a confirmed, paid, at-scale commercial rollout. No major manufacturer publishes audited, region-by-region sales or deployment figures, so public knowledge rests on company announcements, customer press releases, and trade-press reporting of varying reliability.

This article surveys where general-purpose humanoids are actually operating, organized by company, region, and deployment status, and applies an evidentiary lens that separates genuine deployments from demonstrations, preorders, and mere product availability. It is a companion to, and does not restate, the related pages on the humanoid robot market (market size and forecasts), humanoid robot applications (use-case categories), humanoid robot manufacturers (the company roster), and humanoid robot autonomy levels (the autonomy taxonomy). The emphasis here is narrow: verified, real-world placements and their status.

The most heavily documented commercial case, Agility Robotics' Digit at a GXO Logistics site in the U.S. state of Georgia, had moved more than 100,000 totes by late 2025 [1][2]. That single, well-evidenced deployment is the exception that illustrates the rule: most reported "deployments" are earlier-stage than the headlines suggest.

Reading deployment claims: demo vs deployment

The gap between what is announced and what is operating is the central analytical problem in this field. Five distinctions are essential.

A demo is not a deployment. A staged demonstration, whether on a stage, in a laboratory, or in a promotional video, shows a capability under controlled conditions. It says little about sustained, unsupervised work in a customer's live environment.

A preorder is not a delivery. 1X opened preorders for its NEO home robot in October 2025 at $20,000 or a $499 monthly subscription, with first U.S. shipments promised for 2026 [21]. A reservation with a deposit is a commercial signal, not evidence that robots are living and working in homes.

A pilot is not a commercial rollout. Vendors and customers frequently describe the same engagement differently. Figure AI presented its Figure 02 work at BMW as a "full deployment," while BMW itself described the same engagement as a "pilot" that was "successfully completed" before moving to the next robot [4][6]. Both statements can be technically defensible; the customer's framing is usually the more conservative and informative one.

Product availability is not regional sales data. Unitree sells its G1, H1, R1, and H2 humanoids openly, with published prices [20]. That a robot can be purchased says nothing verifiable about how many units are working, where, or for whom, because Unitree, like its peers, does not disclose regional buyer data.

A video is not customer use, and autonomy claims deserve scrutiny. NEO, for example, relies on human teleoperators to complete tasks it cannot yet perform autonomously, a limitation disclosed by 1X itself [21]. Impressive footage may depict teleoperation, scripting, or selected takes rather than autonomous production work. Reading such claims against the autonomy levels framework helps locate where a robot actually sits.

Deployment status categories

The status labels used throughout this article are defined below. They are ordered roughly from strongest to weakest evidence of real-world work.

StatusDefinitionIllustrative example
Commercial deploymentRobots performing paid, repeated work in a customer's live production environment, usually under contractAgility Digit at GXO, Georgia, under a robotics-as-a-service contract [1]
Pilot / field testTime-boxed evaluation in a real setting to assess feasibility, often supervisedFigure 02 at BMW Spartanburg, as framed by BMW [6]; Sanctuary Phoenix at a Mark's store [14]
Research / university deploymentUnits placed at academic or public research labs for study and teachingPAL TALOS at the University of Waterloo [16][17]
Demo / exhibitionRobots shown to the public or press, including museum installationsAmeca at the Computer History Museum [27]
Preorder / announcedOrders taken or partnerships announced ahead of delivery or operation1X NEO consumer preorders [21]
Undisclosed / unconfirmedProduct sold or claims made without verifiable operational dataUnitree regional unit placements [20]

Global deployment matrix

The table below consolidates the verified engagements discussed in this article. "Status" reflects the most conservative supportable reading of the evidence as of July 2026.

Company (HQ)RobotRegion(s)Customer / siteStatusEvidence and notes
Agility Robotics (USA)DigitNorth AmericaGXO, SPANX apparel fulfillment, Flowery Branch, GeorgiaCommercial (RaaS)Multi-year deal since June 2024; 100,000+ totes by Nov 2025 [1][2]
Agility Robotics (USA)DigitNorth AmericaMercado Libre, San Antonio, TexasCommercial agreement, earlySigned Dec 2025; Latin America expansion planned, not yet live [2]
Agility Robotics (USA)DigitNorth AmericaToyota Motor Manufacturing Canada, OntarioCommercial after pilotFeb 2026; 3 pilot units, 7 more planned for RAV4 lines [3]
Agility Robotics (USA)DigitNorth AmericaAmazon, BFI1, Sumner, WashingtonPast pilotTested Oct 2023 for tote recycling; no confirmed current commercial use [30]
Figure AI (USA)Figure 02 / Figure 03North AmericaBMW Group Plant Spartanburg, South CarolinaPilot (per BMW)Figure 02 body-shop pilot over 11 months in 2025; Figure 03 for logistics from 2026 [4][5][6]
Apptronik (USA)ApolloEurope / North AmericaMercedes-Benz (Berlin-Marienfelde, Germany; Kecskemet, Hungary); GXO; JabilPilotSingle-digit units in test mode; intralogistics tasks [8][9]
UBTECH (China)Walker S1 / S2ChinaZeekr, BYD, Geely, FAW-Volkswagen factoriesCommercial / factoryWalker S1 cluster at Zeekr 5G factory; S2 mass production from Nov 2025 [11][12]
UBTECH (China)Walker S2EuropeAirbus, aircraft assemblyEarly concept testingService agreement Jan 2026; not wider industrial use [13]
Sanctuary AI (Canada)PhoenixNorth AmericaMark's store, Langley, British ColumbiaPilot (one week)110 tasks in 2023; separate Magna manufacturing pilots [14][15]
PAL Robotics (Spain)TALOSEurope / North AmericaWaterloo (Canada), LAAS-CNRS (France), Edinburgh (UK), INRIA, IJSResearchSix TALOS units worldwide at research labs [16][17]
Boston Dynamics (USA)Atlas (electric)North AmericaHyundai Metaplant America, Ellabell, GeorgiaField testingTesting from 2026; production roles targeted 2028 to 2030 [18][19]
Unitree (China)G1 / H1 / H2 / R1WorldwideSold as products; buyers undisclosedProduct availabilityPrices published; no regional deployment data [20]
1X (Norway / USA)NEONorth AmericaConsumer homes (preorder)PreorderU.S. deliveries begin 2026; teleoperation-assisted [21][22]
1X (Norway / USA)EVENorth America / EuropeEveron (ADT) night security, U.S. buildingsPrior deploymentAbout 140 units under a 2022 ADT agreement; wheeled base [23]
Tesla (USA)OptimusNorth AmericaTesla Fremont, California; Giga TexasIn-house testingData-collection units, not productive work; volume production not started [24][25]
Engineered Arts (UK)AmecaNorth America / Europe / Middle EastComputer History Museum (California); National Robotarium (Edinburgh); Museum of the Future (Dubai)ExhibitionMuseum and education installations [26][27][28]

North America

North America hosts the densest set of verified engagements, concentrated in automotive manufacturing and third-party logistics. Agility Robotics' Digit is the anchor case: under a multi-year robotics-as-a-service contract signed with GXO Logistics in June 2024, Digit works at the SPANX apparel brand's fulfillment operation in Flowery Branch, Georgia, moving totes between autonomous carts and conveyors, and had surpassed 100,000 totes moved by November 2025 [1][2]. Agility has since signed a commercial agreement with Mercado Libre in December 2025, with the first Digit units designated for San Antonio, Texas [2], and a deployment agreement with Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada in February 2026 covering three pilot units and seven planned additions in Ontario [3]. Amazon tested Digit for tote recycling at its BFI1 site in Sumner, Washington, in October 2023, but has not disclosed a subsequent commercial rollout [30].

In the automotive body shop, Figure AI ran Figure 02 at BMW Group Plant Spartanburg, South Carolina, for roughly 11 months during 2025, supporting production of more than 30,000 BMW X3 vehicles before the successor Figure 03 began a logistics sequencing role in 2026 [4][6]. Apptronik's Apollo is in pilot use with GXO and the manufacturing services firm Jabil in the United States, alongside its Mercedes-Benz pilots in Europe [8]. Boston Dynamics' electric Atlas entered field testing at Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America in Ellabell, Georgia, in early 2026, with Hyundai's published roadmap targeting production sequencing tasks around 2028 and assembly work by 2030 [18][19]. Sanctuary AI ran a one-week Phoenix pilot at a Mark's retail store in Langley, British Columbia, in 2023, completing 110 tasks [14]. Tesla keeps Optimus units inside its own Fremont, California, and Texas plants for supervised learning and data collection; on its Q4 2025 earnings call the company stated the robots were not yet doing useful production work, and volume production had not begun as of mid-2026 [24][25]. Engineered Arts' Ameca appears as a public exhibit at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California [27].

Europe

Europe's verified presence skews toward automotive pilots and research laboratories rather than commercial rollouts. Mercedes-Benz began piloting Apptronik's Apollo for intralogistics at its Digital Factory Campus in Berlin-Marienfelde, Germany, and at its plant in Kecskemet, Hungary, with only a single-digit number of units in test mode, and deepened the partnership through an equity investment in 2025 [8][9]. BMW, having completed its Spartanburg pilot, announced a further humanoid pilot at its Plant Leipzig in Germany, extending its Center of Competence for Physical AI to Europe [7]. UBTECH signed a service agreement with Airbus in January 2026 to trial the Walker S2 in aircraft assembly, which Airbus characterized as early-stage concept testing rather than industrial deployment [13]. PAL Robotics' research humanoid TALOS operates at European institutions including LAAS-CNRS in France and the University of Edinburgh, part of a worldwide fleet of six units [16][17]. Engineered Arts, itself based in Cornwall, supplies Ameca to the National Robotarium in Edinburgh, where the robot arrived in 2024 as a research and outreach installation [26]. 1X, founded in Moss, Norway and now headquartered in Palo Alto, California, previously fielded its wheeled EVE robot in security roles, most notably a 2022 U.S. agreement with Everon (formerly ADT Commercial) covering about 140 units for night patrols [23].

China

China offers the most concrete factory-floor placements of full-size humanoids, driven by domestic electric-vehicle makers. UBTECH deployed a networked cluster of Walker S1 units at Zeekr's 5G intelligent factory for collaborative training across assembly, inspection, and instrumentation zones, and reports earlier deployments at BYD, Geely, and FAW-Volkswagen [12]. Its Walker S2 entered mass production and delivery in November 2025, with disclosed orders exceeding 800 million yuan [11]. Unitree, based in Hangzhou, sells the G1, H1, H2, and R1 humanoids worldwide at published prices but discloses no regional buyer or deployment data, so its market presence cannot be independently mapped [20]. Other domestic developers, including AgiBot, XPeng with its IRON robot, and Fourier Intelligence, are active in the same period, though verifiable operational data is likewise limited. By count of factory pilots, China plausibly leads, but the caveat that such counts rest on company disclosures applies with full force.

Rest of Asia

The public record for Japan and South Korea is thin, in part because the region's champions deploy their humanoids abroad. Toyota's contracted Digit units are in Canada rather than Japan [3], and Hyundai's Atlas testing occurs at its Georgia Metaplant in the United States rather than in Korea [18][19]. As of mid-2026, no confirmed at-scale general-purpose humanoid factory deployment in Japan or South Korea appears in public data, though both countries host substantial research programs and demonstrations, and Korean ownership of Boston Dynamics keeps the region central to the technology's development.

Middle East and Africa

Verified humanoid presence in this region is exhibition rather than industrial. Engineered Arts' Ameca operates as a visitor-facing exhibit at the Museum of the Future in Dubai, interacting with the public in multiple languages [28]. No verified full-size humanoid industrial deployment elsewhere in the Middle East, and none anywhere in Africa, appears in public data as of July 2026.

Latin America

Latin America is largely empty in the public deployment record. The clearest forward signal is Agility Robotics' December 2025 commercial agreement with Mercado Libre, a company headquartered in Argentina, but the initial Digit units under that agreement are designated for San Antonio, Texas, with Latin American warehouses described only as a future phase [2]. No confirmed operating humanoid deployment inside the region is publicly documented.

Deployment economics and business models

The dominant model for Western industrial humanoids is to deploy, not sell. Under robotics-as-a-service, the customer pays for work performed rather than buying hardware outright; GXO's June 2024 contract with Agility was the first publicly disclosed humanoid robotics-as-a-service agreement [1]. This structure lowers customer risk, keeps the vendor responsible for uptime and software updates, and, importantly for this article, keeps unit economics and counts private. Pilots function as a go-to-market motion: a supervised field test at a marquee customer such as BMW, Mercedes-Benz, or Amazon generates operational data, reference credibility, and investor confidence, whether or not it converts to a paid rollout. Capital flows on that promise. Apptronik raised more than $935 million and reached a valuation near $5 billion [10], and Agility agreed a $2.5 billion merger with a special-purpose acquisition company to go public in 2026 [29]. Chinese vendors lean more toward outright sales and government-linked industrial adoption, with UBTECH reporting Walker S2 orders above 800 million yuan [11] and Unitree publishing consumer prices [20]. In both models, regional sales data is scarce because service contracts are confidential, hardware sales are commercially sensitive, and no regulator requires disclosure. The result is an information environment in which demand and shipment claims are easy to assert and hard to audit.

Data limitations and caveats

Readers should treat the figures in this article as disclosures, not audited facts. No humanoid manufacturer publishes region-by-region sales or deployment percentages; the numbers that circulate, whether order backlogs, units shipped, or hours worked, originate with the companies themselves and are rarely verified by an independent party. Demo inflation is pervasive: promotional videos may show teleoperation or scripted runs, and marketing language such as "deployed," "commercial," and "in production" is applied inconsistently, as the divergent Figure and BMW framings and the Sanctuary "commercial" headline over a one-week pilot both show [6][14]. The word "deployed" should therefore be read narrowly: it can mean a single unit tested for one week, or a fleet under a multi-year contract, or anything between. Cross-checking a vendor's claim against the customer's own statement, and against dated primary press releases, is the most reliable available method, and even that leaves gaps. Where a claim rests only on a single company blog post or a syndicated press wire, it should be held as provisional. This survey errs toward the customer's framing, dated primary sources, and conservative status labels.

See also

References

  1. GXO. "GXO Signs Industry-First Multi-Year Agreement with Agility Robotics." June 27, 2024. https://gxo.com/news_article/gxo-signs-industry-first-multi-year-agreement-with-agility-robotics/ ↩
  2. Agility Robotics. "Mercado Libre and Agility Robotics Announce Commercial Agreement." December 10, 2025. https://www.agilityrobotics.com/content/mercado-libre-and-agility-robotics-announce-commercial-agreement ↩
  3. The Robot Report. "Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada to deploy Agility Robotics' Digit humanoids." February 2026. https://www.therobotreport.com/toyota-motor-manufacturing-canada-deploys-agility-robotics-digit-humanoids/ ↩
  4. Figure AI. "F.02 Contributed to the Production of 30,000 Cars at BMW." November 19, 2025. https://www.figure.ai/news/production-at-bmw ↩
  5. BMW Group. "BMW Group advances the use of Physical AI in production with Figure 03 project in Spartanburg." June 2026. https://www.press.bmwgroup.com/global/article/detail/T0458778EN/bmw-group-advances-the-use-of-physical-ai-in-production-with-figure-03-project-in-spartanburg ↩
  6. The Robot Report. "BMW Group deploys Figure 03 humanoid after tests with previous version." June 29, 2026. https://www.therobotreport.com/bmw-group-deploys-figure-03-humanoid-after-tests-previous-version/ ↩
  7. BMW Group. "BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time." 2026. https://www.press.bmwgroup.com/global/article/detail/T0455864EN/bmw-group-to-deploy-humanoid-robots-in-production-in-germany-for-the-first-time ↩
  8. Apptronik and Mercedes-Benz. "Apptronik and Mercedes-Benz Enter Commercial Agreement That Will Pilot Apptronik's Apollo Humanoid Robot in Mercedes-Benz Manufacturing Facilities." PR Newswire, March 2024. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/apptronik-and-mercedes-benz-enter-commercial-agreement-that-will-pilot-apptroniks-apollo-humanoid-robot-in-mercedes-benz-manufacturing-facilities-302089972.html ↩
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  10. TechCrunch. "Humanoid robot startup Apptronik has now raised $935M at a $5B valuation." February 11, 2026. https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/11/humanoid-robot-startup-apptronik-has-now-raised-935m-at-a-5b-valuation/ ↩
  11. UBTECH Robotics. "UBTECH Humanoid Robot Walker S2 Begins Mass Production and Delivery, with Orders Exceeding 800 Million Yuan." PR Newswire, November 20, 2025. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ubtech-humanoid-robot-walker-s2-begins-mass-production-and-delivery-with-orders-exceeding-800-million-yuan-302616924.html ↩
  12. Humanoids Daily. "UBTech Humanoids Clock In: Walker S1 Robots Deployed at Zeekr Factory for Collaborative Tasks." 2025. https://www.humanoidsdaily.com/news/ubtech-humanoids-clock-in-walker-s1-robots-deployed-at-zeekr-factory-for-collaborative-tasks ↩
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  14. Sanctuary AI. "Sanctuary AI Deploys First Humanoid General-Purpose Robot Commercially." 2024. https://www.sanctuary.ai/blog/sanctuary-ai-deploys-first-humanoid-general-purpose-robot-commercially ↩
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  17. University of Waterloo RoboHub. "TALOS." https://uwaterloo.ca/robohub/profiles/talos ↩
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  26. Heriot-Watt University. "World's most advanced humanoid robot arrives at the National Robotarium." 2024. https://www.hw.ac.uk/news/2024/worlds-most-advanced-humanoid-robot-arrives-at-the-national-robotarium ↩
  27. Computer History Museum. "Computer History Museum Unveils Chatbots Decoded: Exploring AI Exhibit." November 2024. https://computerhistory.org/press-releases/computer-history-museum-unveils-chatbots-decoded-exploring-ai-exhibit/ ↩
  28. Blooloop. "Museum of the Future debuts enhanced Ameca humanoid robot." https://blooloop.com/museum/news/museum-of-the-future-ameca-humanoid-robot/ ↩
  29. GeekWire. "Digit maker Agility Robotics to go public in $2.5B deal." 2026. https://www.geekwire.com/2026/digit-maker-agility-robotics-to-go-public-in-2-5b-deal-heres-what-the-filings-say-about-its-finances/ ↩
  30. TechCrunch. "Amazon begins testing Agility's Digit robot for warehouse work." October 18, 2023. https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/18/amazon-begins-testing-agilitys-digit-robot-for-warehouse-work/ ↩

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