Zeekr plant shows dozens of humanoid robots capable of working together

NINGBO: The Chinese robotics specialist UBTech has announced that it has successfully tested the deployment of several dozen of its humanoid robots in an electric car factory — a world first.

An entire team of Walker S1 humanoid robots was put to the test and worked in unison at the Zeekr factory in Ningbo, China. Zeekr is the high-end electric car brand of the Geely Group.

The Walker S1 is a human-sized robot, standing just over 1.70 m tall and weighing 76 kg. It has 360-degree interaction capabilities with its environment, enabling it to perform many tasks carried out in a group.

Since the fall of 2024, several of the robots have been deployed in this factory, ably assisted by a swarm intelligence system.


According to the South China Morning Post, UBTech has developed a reasoning model that allows its robots to plan and coordinate their tasks autonomously, without getting in one another's way.

In the Zeekr factory, they have been assigned to assembly, quality control testing and vehicle door processing. In particular, they are responsible for lifting and handling heavy loads or even delicate materials.

This mass deployment marks an important step towards increasingly automated and intelligent production in a rapidly evolving sector in China.

In the United States, Hyundai Motor is set to test Atlas robots from Boston Dynamics in its factories. Other manufacturers have already taken the plunge, albeit with somewhat less impressive robots.

This is the case with Mercedes and BMW, which have already begun various phases of testing, in partnership with Apptronik and Figure, respectively.