Sanctuary AI said it will give its humanoid robot to a Magna factory. Magna is a company from Canada. It makes and puts together cars for big carmakers in Europe like Mercedes, Jaguar, and BMW. We don’t know exactly how many of Sanctuary AI’s robots Magna will use.
This announcement comes after other companies, like Figure and Apptronik, said they would test their humanoid robots with BMW and Mercedes. Another company, Agility, made a deal with Ford in January 2020 at CES. But Ford wanted to use their robots for delivering packages. Agility decided to focus on putting robots in warehouses with partners like Amazon instead.
Magna put money into Sanctuary AI in 2021. Around that time, Elon Musk talked about making a robot to work in Tesla factories. The robot got the name “Optimus.” Sanctuary AI, which is based in Vancouver, introduced its own robot called Phoenix in May last year. Phoenix is about 5 feet 7 inches tall and weighs 155 pounds.
Phoenix isn’t Sanctuary’s first humanoid robot. They had an earlier version that was used in a store in Canada. But Phoenix is the first one that can walk on legs. Most videos only show its upper body. Sanctuary also worked on making its hands able to do delicate tasks, which is important if the robot is supposed to do more than just move things around.
Sanctuary calls this pilot program “a multi-disciplinary assessment of improving cost and scalability of robots using Magna’s automotive product portfolio, engineering and manufacturing capabilities; and a strategic equity investment by Magna.”
These deals are just tests. They don’t prove that this kind of robot will work perfectly. That’s what Magna wants to find out. The important thing for them is if they will get a good return on their investment. We don’t know how many robots will be used, how long the test will last, or which factory they’ll go to.
