Where Humanoid Robots Actually Work in 2026

Of the 16 sites where we can confirm humanoid robots at work in 2026, 10 are car or electronics plants and two are Amazon warehouses. The other four are a hospital, a security contract and two research labs. China and the United States hold almost all of the industrial sites; Europe has one factory pilot. And nearly every industrial deployment has the same shape: a pilot, not a fleet, in a separated zone, doing one task.

The sites below come from our deployments map and our catalog check of 26 September 2026. Where a site is a company's plan rather than a working robot, the text says so.

The map in one table

| Site | Country | Robot | Task | Since | Status | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | BMW, Spartanburg | USA | Figure 02 | Assembly and logistics | 2024 | Ended after ~11 months | | Amazon, Seattle area | USA | Agility Digit | Tote transfer | 2024 | Running | | Amazon, Houston | USA | Agility Digit | Warehouse logistics pilot | 2025 | Pilot | | Hyundai Metaplant, Georgia | USA | Boston Dynamics Atlas | Manufacturing, training centre | 2026 | Running | | BYD, Shenzhen | China | UBTECH Walker S | Quality inspection | 2023 | Running | | Geely, Ningbo | China | UBTECH Walker S2 | Material handling on the line | 2025 | Running | | Foxconn, Zhengzhou | China | UBTECH Walker S2 | Electronics assembly support | 2025 | Running | | BYD, Changsha | China | AgiBot A2 | Automotive manufacturing | 2025 | Running | | SAIC and HZF plants | China | Kepler K2 | Industrial manipulation | 2025 | Running | | Xiaomi EV plant | China | Xiaomi "Tieda" | Nut installation pilot shifts | 2026 | Pilot | | Mercedes-Benz, Berlin | Germany | Apptronik Apollo | Six-month production pilot | reported Apr 2026 | Pilot | | AP-HP, Paris | France | Enchanted Mirokai | Patient room delivery | 2024 | Running | | LAAS-CNRS, Toulouse | France | PAL TALOS | Whole-body control research | 2017 | Research | | MIT, Cambridge | USA | NAO | Human-robot interaction research | 2018 | Research | | ADT Commercial | USA | 1X EVE | Security patrol | 2023 | Maintained, not expanded |

Car plants: where most humanoids are

Car makers are the largest buyer group by a wide margin, and the reason is practical. A car plant already runs industrial robots, has safety processes for them, and has repetitive handling tasks at stations built around a standing human.

China leads by number of sites. UBTECH's first-generation Walker S has done quality inspection at BYD in Shenzhen since 2023, and the company also lists NIO as a Walker S customer. The newer Walker S2 moved into Geely's Ningbo plant and Foxconn's Zhengzhou site in 2025. AgiBot A2 works at BYD in Changsha. Kepler's Forerunner K2 runs at SAIC and HZF factories. UBTECH has the widest customer list: Foxconn, BYD, Geely and Airbus.

In the US, the reference case is over. Figure 02 spent about 11 months at BMW Spartanburg and helped build more than 30,000 vehicles before Figure retired the fleet and replaced the model with Figure 03. The new US anchor is Hyundai. Atlas went into production in January 2026, its first commercial units were committed to Hyundai Metaplant, and an Atlas training centre opened there in September 2026. Hyundai plans 25,000 units.

The Atlas vs Walker S2 comparison sets the two car-plant robots side by side.

Warehouses: two operators, one robot

Warehousing is the second market, and it runs on one robot. Agility Digit moves totes for Amazon in a Seattle-area fulfilment centre (since 2024) and in a Houston pilot (since 2025), and it works at GXO sites. Neither company discloses how many robots it runs. The spec sheet explains the fit: a 16 kg payload covers standard totes, and about 240 minutes per charge lets Digit work a docked cycle through a shift. It is also why warehouses have not moved to heavier cases yet; that is the gap Digit 5, rated at 22.7 kg, is meant to close.

Apptronik Apollo also runs at GXO, as a pilot. The Figure 02 vs Digit comparison sets the robots behind the best-known US factory and warehouse deployments side by side.

Everything else: a hospital, a patrol and the labs

Outside factories and warehouses the map thins out fast.

Enchanted Tools' Mirokai delivers to patient rooms at AP-HP in Paris, the only hospital deployment we can confirm. Mirokai is not a biped: it balances on a ball. It is priced at roughly EUR 30,000 and still in development as a product, with a wider B2B rollout planned from 2026.

1X's wheeled EVE has patrolled for ADT Commercial since 2023. 1X no longer markets EVE; existing deployments are maintained but not expanded, and the company's effort has moved to the home robot NEO.

Research labs are the oldest and steadiest users. PAL TALOS has run whole-body control research at LAAS-CNRS in Toulouse since 2017. NAO has served human-robot interaction research at MIT since 2018. Neither is a commercial deployment, but together they are the longest-running humanoid installations on the map.

China and the US split the map

Count the industrial sites and the split is clear. China has seven: BYD twice, Geely, Foxconn, SAIC, HZF and Xiaomi's own EV plant. The US has four: BMW (ended), Amazon twice and Hyundai Georgia. Europe has one, Mercedes-Benz in Berlin, where a six-month Apptronik Apollo pilot reported a 14% throughput gain (April 2026). UBTECH lists Airbus as a customer but has not named a European site.

China also has a carmaker building its own humanoid. Xiaomi runs its next-generation humanoid, codenamed "Tieda", in pilot shifts at its EV plant and reports a 98% success rate on self-tapping nut installation. Xiaomi also says humanoids are far from large-scale commercialisation and has set no production date.

Japan is absent from the working map but not from the plans. Nikkei reported in September 2026 that Toyota intends to deploy 400,000 units of "Eley", a wheeled 50 kg humanoid with two-finger hands, across 60 plants from 2028. It is the largest announced plan in the industry, and it has not started.

What every industrial deployment has in common

Three patterns repeat across the working sites.

It is a pilot, not a fleet. Figure 02 at BMW, Digit in Houston, Apollo at Mercedes-Benz and Tieda at Xiaomi were all framed as pilots. Even where a robot is in regular use, no customer publishes the fleet size. UBTECH's 921 humanoids in the first half of 2026 went to several customers, none with a published fleet count; we covered the unit numbers in who actually ships humanoids.

It is a separated zone. None of the confirmed industrial sites describes humanoids working in open aisles among people. Agility markets its Digit 5, due in 2027, specifically for fence-free work next to people, which signals that the current generation is not built for it.

It is one task. Quality inspection at BYD, tote transfer at Amazon, nut installation at Xiaomi, material handling at Geely. None of the confirmed sites runs a humanoid across several jobs in one shift.

For a buyer, that is the realistic template for 2026: one station, one task, a pilot contract with a defined end date, and a plan to measure throughput before committing to more units.