CATL Pioneers Humanoid Robot Manufacturing in High-Volume Battery Production
In a landmark advance for both advanced manufacturing and industrial automation, Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. (CATL), the world’s largest producer of power and energy storage batteries, has inaugurated the world’s first large-scale humanoid robot-powered battery pack production line at its battery manufacturing base in Luoyang, Henan Province, China.
This development marks a significant leap in applying embodied intelligence and general-purpose robotics to high-precision manufacturing tasks traditionally reliant on skilled human labor. For metrology practitioners and quality professionals, it represents an early real-world deployment of robotic systems capable of not only handling delicate electrical assembly but also maintaining stringent quality standards in dynamic production environments.
From Manual Labor to Autonomous Precision
Until now, final End-of-Line and DCR (Direct Current Internal Resistance) testing routines in battery pack assembly required human workers to manually connect high-voltage test plugs and harnesses = a process demanding dexterity, high situational awareness, and risk-averse precision. These tasks carried not only safety risks due to high voltages but also inherent variability in operator performance.
Enter “Xiao Mo”; a humanoid robot developed within CATL’s ecosystem by Spirit AI, a Hangzhou-based robotics firm backed by CATL. Equipped with an advanced Vision-Language-Action (VLA) model, Xiao Mo perceives its environment holistically and executes nuanced physical operations with real-time adaptation to subtle deviations in component position and wiring harness orientation.
The robot:
- Adapts dynamically to positional variations in incoming materials.
- Modulates insertion forces to avoid damaging connectors.
- Achieves a connection success rate exceeding 99%, comparable to or better than experienced technicians.
- Maintains operational speeds on par with skilled human workers, while tripling daily workload due to tireless 24/7 operation.
For the metrology community, this highlights how embodied AI systems can meet or exceed the repeatability and traceability requirements that are foundational to reliable battery testing and assembly operations.
Embodied AI Meets Industrial Metrology
What makes this deployment particularly notable isn’t just automation – it’s sensor fusion and decision-making in a real factory context. The VLA model enables the humanoid to perceive:
- Visual cues from component placement,
- Semantic task context through language-integrated control,
- Real-time feedback loops for corrective motion and force control.
This kind of embodied intelligence is directly relevant to metrology’s ongoing evolution, where AI-augmented inspection and adaptive control are reshaping quality assurance. As TOM (Test, Operate, and Maintain) systems merge sensor data with AI models, robots like Xiao Mo act not only as labor replacements but as partners in ensuring precision and consistency across high-volume production variants.
Implications for Quality, Safety, and Scalability
According to CATL, the robot:
- Reduces defect rates by autonomously detecting wiring issues and reporting anomalies in real time.
- Improves safety by eliminating human exposure to high-voltage test interfaces.
- Boosts throughput and consistency, vital for mass-manufactured EV battery packs.
These are foundational concerns where measurement uncertainty, process control, and human factors are critical considerations. The adoption of humanoid robots may shift how quality engineers calibrate, validate, and audit manufacturing lines that now include autonomous agents alongside humans.
CATL’s Strategic Vision
CATL’s deployment aligns with broader trends toward intelligent factories and digital transformation in battery manufacturing. As a global leader with over 38% market share in EV batteries, CATL’s embrace of embodied robotics signals a strategic push to combine AI, automation, and high-precision production to maintain competitive advantage and expand capacity.
Embodied AI Marks the Next Evolution of Intelligent Manufacturing
The CATL’s first humanoid robot-powered production line offers a preview of what’s on the horizon – Robots with generalized perception and action replacing point-specific automation, AI-driven process quality monitoring embedded at the execution level and reduced variability and elevated safety as inherent benefits of shared human-robot workspaces.
As embodied AI robots mature, they may soon support tasks beyond final testing = including assembly, inline inspection, and adaptive calibration – fundamentally blending measurement science with autonomous manufacturing systems.
For more information: www.catl.com
