GM’s Sterling Anderson Favors Task-Specific Robots Over Humanoids

General Motors Chief Product Officer Sterling Anderson said factory automation should begin with robots designed for specific production tasks, arguing that human-shaped machines should not be the default for vehicle plants.

“The most valuable real estate in a factory is the floor,” Anderson said. He offered a robot suspended from a gantry and reaching into vehicles on a moving assembly line as an example of specialized equipment.

Anderson said GM works with heavy machinery suppliers such as Fanuc and is developing robotics systems internally. He did not identify a particular machine or deployment.

GM’s earlier robotics work covered cobots for U.S. assembly plants, including their software and manipulation systems. GM said more than 100 robotics, AI and hardware specialists worked across its labs in Warren, Michigan, and Mountain View, California. TokenPost previously covered GM’s factory robotics program.

At GM Forward in New York on Oct. 21, GM presented a broader technology roadmap spanning AI, virtual engineering, centralized computing and autonomous driving. GM said its goal is to cut its traditional four-to-five-year vehicle development timeline in half through enterprise AI and virtualization. The automaker gave no target date for reaching that goal.