Mitsubishi to build 1,000 humanoid robots monthly in Kyoto — SkimNews
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- Mitsubishi plans to build up to 1,000 Highlanders humanoid robots per month at one of its ICE engine plants in Kyoto, with mass production potentially starting as early as next year.
- Highlanders, a University of Tokyo startup, is co-developing the humanoids with Mitsubishi under an MOU signed last month; the robots will first work in Mitsubishi's own facilities, including assembling themselves at the former Kyoto engine plant.
- Takao Kato, chairman and CEO of Mitsubishi Motors, framed the collaboration as 'building a new industrial foundation in which humans and robots work together' and a way to deepen Mitsubishi's humanoid robotics expertise.
- The flagship HL Human platform features 19 degrees of freedom, high-output electric actuators, and AI-powered perception, motion planning, and natural-language interaction aimed at manufacturing, logistics, construction, and disaster response work.
- Mitsubishi is positioned in the source as a global leader in automation and controls — not merely an also-ran automaker — with technical overlap in batteries, servos, motors, and AI that also feed humanoid development.
Why it matters: Mitsubishi's existing automation and controls expertise gives it a manufacturing leg up over EV rivals entering humanoids cold. Targeting 1,000 units per month at a repurposed Kyoto engine plant signals industrial-scale production rather than prototype demos — and Mitsubishi's own workers will train the robots in-house before they're deployed elsewhere.
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