Humanoid and Schaeffler Sign Binding Deal to Deploy a Four-Digit Fleet of Wheeled Humanoid Robots Across Global Factories by 2032

Overview

UK-based humanoid robotics startup Humanoid and German motion-technology group Schaeffler announced on May 13 a binding, phased deployment and supply agreement that combines two contracts: a Robot-as-a-Service rollout that targets a four-digit number of wheeled humanoid units across Schaeffler’s global factories by 2032, and a five-year actuator supply deal that makes Schaeffler the preferred supplier for more than half of Humanoid’s joint actuators through 2031, according to Robotics Tomorrow and The Robot Report.

The two companies had already disclosed a strategic partnership in January 2026 and run proof-of-concept testing before signing the binding agreement now, according to Humanoid Robotics Technology. Humanoid’s HMND 01 platform was also one of the humanoids The Machine Herald previously reported on at Hannover Messe 2026, where the company was running an autonomous-logistics proof of concept at a Siemens electronics factory in Erlangen and a separate SAP-integrated pilot at automotive supplier Martur Fompak.

What We Know

Deployment scale and timeline

The deployment side of the agreement targets a four-digit number of wheeled humanoid robots across Schaeffler’s global manufacturing sites by 2032, as Robotics Tomorrow described and as Interesting Engineering reported, which framed the deal as “one of the largest disclosed humanoid robot rollouts to date.”

The first systems are to go live in Germany before the end of 2026, per The Robot Report. The initial deployment phase runs from December 2026 through June 2027 across two Schaeffler sites in Germany, as DC Velocity reported.

The two German sites have distinct workloads. At Herzogenaurach, the rollout will focus on “advancing box handling use case within a live production environment,” according to Robotics Tomorrow. At Schweinfurt, the plan is a three-month capability demonstration and integration testing phase, followed by three months of on-site validation aimed at near-full-scale operations, per Interesting Engineering and DC Velocity.

Robot-as-a-Service model

The deployment side of the contract is structured around a Robot-as-a-Service model. Humanoid will supply the robots together with end-to-end operational services — connection to its fleet management software, maintenance, 24/7 technical support, software updates and ongoing performance management — rather than selling units outright, per The Robot Report and DC Velocity.

Five-year actuator supply agreement

Alongside the deployment contract, the two companies signed a five-year supply agreement under which Schaeffler becomes Humanoid’s preferred supplier for more than 50% of the joint actuators in its wheeled-based platforms through 2031, as Robotics Tomorrow reported. The agreement is expected to translate into a seven-digit number of actuator units over its term, per DC Velocity and Interesting Engineering.

Unite.AI noted that joint actuators “can account for roughly 50% of a humanoid robot’s bill of materials,” framing the supply-side commitment as roughly comparable in importance to the deployment side of the deal, according to Unite.AI.

Executive statements

Artem Sokolov, the founder and chief executive of Humanoid, said in the announcement that “together with Schaeffler, one of our key industrial partners, we are taking an important step toward making humanoid robotics part of global manufacturing operations,” as Robotics Tomorrow reported.

Dr. Jochen Schroeder, chief operating officer at Schaeffler AG, framed the deal as a dual industrial-scaling and supply commitment: “By supporting the phased deployment of humanoid systems in real manufacturing environments and serving as a preferred supplier of actuators, we are contributing to the industrial scaling of this technology while further strengthening our role in future-oriented motion solutions,” according to Interesting Engineering.

The hardware

The robots covered by the contract are wheeled units from Humanoid’s HMND 01 family — a London-headquartered company founded in 2024 by Sokolov, per Silicon Canals. The HMND 01 platform stands 175 cm tall and weighs 70 kg, with a walking speed of 1.5 m/s, an average runtime of about four hours and a payload capacity of 15 kg, also per Silicon Canals. The Schaeffler agreement covers the wheeled variant of the line; Humanoid’s roadmap also includes a bipedal model, as DC Velocity noted.

What We Don’t Know

Neither company has published a contract value, a per-unit RaaS subscription price, the floor of the four-digit deployment range, or a target headcount for any single Schaeffler plant. Independent productivity metrics — pick rates, cycle times, intervention rates per shift, mean time between failures — were also not disclosed for the prior proof-of-concept work that the binding agreement builds on. The Hannover Messe and Martur Fompak pilots that preceded this deal likewise stopped short of publishing those numbers, as The Machine Herald previously reported.

The ramp from the initial December 2026 to June 2027 phase at Herzogenaurach and Schweinfurt to a four-digit fleet across Schaeffler’s global network is not broken out year by year in the announcement, and the deal does not disclose which Schaeffler sites outside Germany are in scope.

Analysis

The agreement is notable less for the headline robot count than for what it bundles together. Most humanoid-robot deployment announcements in 2026 have either committed to a small pilot fleet at a single customer site or attached a large unit number to a non-binding letter of intent. The Humanoid-Schaeffler contract is binding, runs through 2032, names specific plants and specific tasks for the first phase, and is structured as Robot-as-a-Service rather than a unit sale, per The Robot Report and Robotics Tomorrow.

Layering a five-year actuator supply agreement onto a deployment contract is also unusual. It binds the customer’s component-supply business to the robot vendor’s success: Schaeffler’s actuator pipeline ramps with Humanoid’s bill of materials, and Humanoid’s wheeled platforms depend on Schaeffler’s joint-actuator output. For Schaeffler, that puts a legacy automotive-supplier business directly into the humanoid value chain on both the demand side and the supply side. For Humanoid, the supply agreement locks in roughly half of the joint-actuator count for the wheeled platform — the part of the robot Unite.AI estimated represents about half of its bill of materials, according to Unite.AI — at the same time as the customer commits to deploy them.

Whether the four-digit deployment target is met by 2032 will depend on the harder, less-glamorous numbers that the announcement did not contain: how the Herzogenaurach box-handling robots perform against fixed automation on cost-per-pick over a year of shifts, how often human supervisors are pulled in during Schweinfurt’s validation phase, and whether the RaaS service economics work out for both sides at fleet scale. The contract reserves the right answer to those questions for the production-line data that begins generating in December 2026.