Schaeffler said on 21 August it has finished validation testing on formed strain wave gearboxes built specifically for humanoid robots and will manufacture them at scale from 2027.
What it means for your work
Humanoid pricing has been held up by hand-built actuators; an established supplier committing a production line to them is what moves the cost curve.
Our read on the items that move something. The reporting is everyone's; this part is ours.
1
The retrofit-onto-fleet-you-already-own pattern keeps winning the money in construction robotics — the productivity claim is the vendor’s, but the deployment model means a contractor can pilot it without a capital purchase.Gravis Robotics raises $200M from SoftBank to retrofit excavators into autonomous machinesThe Robotics & Physical AI beat · The Robot Report
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Humanoid programmes are gated on actuator supply rather than on demos, so a tier-one supplier committing to volume is the real constraint moving.Schaeffler will mass-produce humanoid-robot gearboxes from 2027The Robotics & Physical AI beat · The Robot Report
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Driving at fleet scale turns out to be an inference-hardware problem as much as a model problem, and this is a rare public number for it.Waymo names the silicon behind its robotaxis — a purpose-built 5nm chip above 1,000 TOPSThe Robotics & Physical AI beat · Robotics & Automation News
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