Toyota to Deploy 400,000 Self-Developed Humanoid Robots ‘ELEY’ in Production Facilities Worldwide

September 20, 2026

강원도민일보 South Korea

Overview

Toyota Motor Corporation announced plans to deploy 400,000 self-developed humanoid robots, ‘ELEY,’ across its global production facilities, establishing a collaborative environment with human workers. Weighing 50kg and featuring two fingers, ELEY navigates on wheels rather than bipedally. It can autonomously learn and master optimal methods for precise tasks, such as picking parts from boxes and folding fabric, significantly enhancing production efficiency and flexibility.

In Depth

Key Findings

Toyota Motor Corporation has initiated a plan to deploy a total of 400,000 of its self-developed humanoid robots, named ‘ELEY,’ across its global production bases. ELEY, weighing 50kg and equipped with two fingers, utilizes wheels for locomotion instead of bipedal movement. It is designed to efficiently perform precise, repetitive tasks and possesses the capability to autonomously learn and optimize its work methods.

Technical Details

The ELEY robot integrates advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms, allowing it to learn from its environment and continuously improve its performance. Key capabilities include:

Precise Manipulation: Its two-fingered gripper enables delicate handling of parts of various shapes and textures, accurately placing them. ELEY excels at intricate tasks such as extracting components from one box and transferring them to another.
Adaptive Learning: ELEY can learn new tasks and procedures by observing human demonstrations. Through this learning process, it autonomously discovers optimal operational patterns, improving efficiency in repetitive tasks and flexibly responding to unexpected situations.
Wheeled Mobility: By moving on wheels rather than bipedally, ELEY can navigate flat factory floors quickly and stably, streamlining logistics and movement between work points on the production line. This enables the creation of flexible production lines, a challenge for traditional fixed-position robots.

The 50kg design strikes a balance, ensuring safety in collaborative environments with humans while maintaining the necessary payload capacity for industrial tasks.

Background and Industry Context

Manufacturing floors in the automotive industry face pressing challenges including labor shortages, the need for cost reduction, and the demand for high-mix, low-volume production. Many manual tasks performed by humans are repetitive and physically demanding yet require high precision. Toyota’s introduction of ELEY offers an innovative solution to these issues. By entrusting robots with precise and repetitive work, human workers can focus on more creative and value-added tasks, leading to overall productivity improvements and enhanced employee engagement.

Strategic Significance and Outlook

The large-scale deployment of ELEY holds the potential to significantly transform the future of automotive manufacturing. A deployment of 400,000 units establishes a new standard for “Human-Robot Collaboration,” accelerating the transition to smart factories. In the future, humanoid robots like ELEY are expected to acquire more complex cognitive tasks and problem-solving abilities, leading to applications across various industrial sectors. This initiative signifies the next phase of automation in manufacturing, contributing to greater efficiency, flexibility, and innovative working environments globally.

Source: https://www.kado.net/news/curationView.html?idxno=2073629

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