Xiaomi’s humanoid robot completes an 8-hour task at its own car factory, with two charging breaks

Xiaomi’s announcement: 8 hours on the production line

On Nov. 3 at 9 a.m. UTC (5 p.m. in Beijing), Xiaomi said its full-size humanoid robot had taken on an 8-hour task at the company’s own car factory. The post came from Xiaomi Tech, an X account that carries a Xiaomi affiliation badge. According to the company, the robot worked at the center console side-cover sorting station. Xiaomi says it can autonomously detect and correct anomalies while coordinating with the production line system. The company calls the run another step toward real-world industrial deployment.

According to a Chinese-language statement reported by Cover News (封面新闻), it was the first time Xiaomi tried an 8-hour task at the station. The statement says the station’s full-day production demand was met and its production-line-level capability was preliminarily validated. The video Xiaomi posted runs 5 minutes 59 seconds.

According to Chinese media, Xiaomi founder Lei Jun shared the same video on Weibo on Nov. 3 or 4; Lei Jun’s X account has no post about it. Cailian Press’s 科创板日报 (STAR Market Daily) reported Lei Jun’s reply to a Weibo user: “This is a general-purpose humanoid robot. Without changing its hardware, it can adapt to more different roles and scenarios.”

Xiaomi Tech@XiaomiTech_

8 hours on the production line. 🤖

Xiaomi’s full-size humanoid robot takes on an 8-hour task at the Center Console Side-Cover Sorting Workstation at Xiaomi Auto Factory.

Beyond sustained operation, it can autonomously detect and correct anomalies while coordinating with the production line system — another step toward real-world industrial deployment.

#XiaomiRobotics #EmbodiedAI

The station: sorting side covers by car sequence

The task takes place in the final assembly workshop of Xiaomi’s car factory. The job, called 中控台侧盖板排序 in Chinese, is to sort center console side covers in the order cars will arrive on the line. According to 科创板日报, it’s an SPS (set parts supply) sequencing station. The robot picks large, irregular, flexible covers from a material bin, adjusts their orientation and places each one in the rack slot that matches the car sequence. The work has to keep up with the line’s pace.

In Xiaomi’s video, the robot takes a cover from a bin carried by an autonomous mobile robot (AMR) and turns it in its hands. It then walks a few steps and slots the cover into a wheeled rack cart. AMRs bring bins to the station and take them away; Xiaomi labels this “AMR Coordination: Workstation Material Replenishment.” The same outlet reports that the robots adjust their picking route and steps to the arriving AMRs.

Xiaomi’s post refers to a single robot, but three humanoids appear in Xiaomi’s video. In front is a dark gray biped with “02” on its arm and foot and “XIAOMI” on its shoulder. Behind it is a white biped. The third is a humanoid on a wheeled base. It isn’t clear whether the white robot works at the same station or at a second rack nearby.

Xiaomi hasn’t given the robot an official model name; its posts call it a “full-size humanoid robot.” 科创板日报 refers to it as “CyberOne 02,” though the “02” on the robot may be a unit number. Xiaomi unveiled its first humanoid, CyberOne, in 2022. The company’s official CyberOne page still describes only the 2022 model, and no specifications for the new robot have been released.

When a part drops

Xiaomi says the robot detects and corrects deviations on its own. In one example in Xiaomi’s video, a cover falls from the front robot’s hand with the counter at about 1 hour 45 minutes. The wheeled humanoid comes over and picks it up from the floor. Xiaomi labels the moment “Dropped Material: Multi-Robot Collaboration.” Because that part of the video runs at 100x speed, the event lasts about 1.5 seconds.

Electrek’s Fred Lambert singled out the wheeled robot. In Lambert’s view, wheels are more efficient than legs on a flat factory floor and leave room for a bigger battery. That is Electrek’s interpretation.

The counter, two charging breaks and the speed-up

The counter in the corner of Xiaomi’s video reads “Cumulative Working Time.” It starts at 00:00 nine seconds in and reaches 08:04 at the 5:48 mark. The closing card reads “Completed 8 Hours and 5 Minutes of Stable Operation” and “Preliminary Validation of Production-Line-Level Operational Capability.”

That time excludes charging breaks. When cumulative work reaches 3 hours 2 minutes, and again at 6 hours 3 minutes, a caption reads “Equipment Status: Charging.” The counter stops in the meantime and the robots leave the station. 科创板日报 also reports charging at those two points. Xiaomi hasn’t said how long the breaks lasted, how the robots were charged (by cable or by battery swap) or how long the full shift took.

On Nov. 4, Electrek wrote that Xiaomi didn’t explain how the robots stayed powered for a full shift. Xiaomi’s video does show the two charging breaks; what’s missing is the method and their length.

The video is sped up. According to its speed badge, it runs at 5x at first, then 30x and 60x, and at 100x for most of its length.

From March to November in three stages

In December 2025, Lei Jun said in an interview that Xiaomi expected to deploy humanoid robots at scale in its factories within five years.

Xiaomi says that in the first stage, on March 2, 2026, the robot ran continuously and autonomously for three hours. It worked at a self-tapping nut installation station in the die-casting shop. The job was installing nuts on a single-piece die-cast rear underbody. Simultaneous installation on both sides succeeded 90.2% of the time, and the robot met a cycle time as fast as 76 seconds. Lei Jun wrote that the system was based on the Xiaomi-Robotics-0 vision-language-action (VLA) model. According to Lei Jun, a “large number” of robots will enter Xiaomi’s factories within five years.

In the second stage, on July 14, the two-sided success rate at the nut station rose to 98%. Xiaomi said that was 1 percentage point lower than a human worker’s quality rate. Two new stations were added in the final assembly logistics area: center console side-cover sorting and box folding. Both reached a 90% success rate. Xiaomi described this as its first long-duration work on a flexible car part. According to IT Home (IT之家), which relayed the statement, a remote intervention mechanism stayed in place for dangerous or irreversible failures. Staff could take over a robot when needed.

The third step, in November, brought 8 hours 5 minutes at the same side-cover station. The 98% figure was July’s rate at the nut station; no success rate has been disclosed for the 8-hour run. The November statement doesn’t mention remote intervention.

Xiaomi-Robotics-1 and the same-day announcements

On Aug. 5, Xiaomi open-sourced its Xiaomi-Robotics-1 model. The company says the model was pre-trained on more than 100,000 hours of UMI data. Post-training used more than 10,000 hours of cross-embodiment data. UMI data is demonstration data collected by people using handheld grippers. Xiaomi hasn’t explicitly said the factory robot runs this model; the November statement refers to the “same foundation model technologies.”

Xiaomi made the announcement on the day the World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit opened, and it announced two awards the same day. Xiaomi Group received an Outstanding Contribution Award for innovation breakthroughs. The robotics unit’s work on a general-purpose robot manipulation foundation model for large-scale deployment won a Leading Science and Technology Award. Xiaomi Tech ties that award to Xiaomi-Robotics-1; neither award was for the 8-hour run.

The same day, Xiaomi Tech said a system powered by Xiaomi-Robotics-1 had begun trial operations at Xiaomi Youth Apartments. According to the company, the system uses multi-round post-training and an enhanced agent framework. In a 30-minute run, it completed more than 50 task chains across 3 rooms.

Xiaomi Tech@XiaomiTech_

Xiaomi-Robotics-1 is taking on new challenges in real-world environments!

With multi-round post-training and an enhanced Agent framework, the embodied AI system powered by Xiaomi-Robotics-1 has started trial operations at Xiaomi Youth Apartments.

In a 30-minute run, it completed 50+ task chains across 3 rooms, showcasing its ability to handle a range of tasks in a real-world environment.

Xiaomi-Robotics-1 has also received the Leading Science and Technology Award at the World Internet Conference.

#XiaomiRobotics #EmbodiedAI

What Xiaomi didn’t disclose, and humanoids at other factories

Xiaomi didn’t disclose how many covers were sorted, the success rate over the eight hours or how many times people stepped in. It also didn’t give a cycle time for the station, as it had with the 76 seconds in March. Electrek questioned these gaps and was cautious about the word “autonomous.” It noted that Tesla’s Optimus robots at the 2024 “We, Robot” event were remotely operated. It also credited Xiaomi for publishing success rates and cycle times in earlier trials. Electrek said the run could be one of the more impressive humanoid demos if it was truly autonomous for eight hours and the robots handled errors themselves.

The robot isn’t for sale. At the World Robot Conference in August, Xiaomi described it as a non-commercial prototype developed for internal use at its EV factory. The company also said it was not for sale. Xiaomi said the robot completed that event’s flower-giving interaction without remote human teleoperation. No production or sales timeline has been announced; the five-year goal concerns Xiaomi’s own factories.

Xiaomi Tech@XiaomiTech_

Xiaomi’s humanoid robot at the 2026 World Robot Conference. 🤖🌹

On Chinese Valentine’s Day, the robot is part of the flower-gifting experience on the show floor. From picking a flower and adding decorative confetti to handing it to a visitor, it handles the entire sequence autonomously.

Powered by an embodied model, it completes the interaction without remote human teleoperation.

Note: Developed as a non-commercial prototype for internal use at Xiaomi EV Factory. Not for sale.
#HumanoidRobots #EmbodiedAI #Robotics #XiaomiRobotics #WRC2026

Similar jobs are being tested elsewhere. Figure says its Figure 03 began a sequencing job at Hall 52 of BMW’s Spartanburg plant on June 30, 2026. That job also involves placing irregularly arriving parts into the right slots and pulling a cart. According to Figure, the earlier Figure 02 contributed to the production of 30,000 cars at BMW.

UBTech said in November 2025 that Walker S2 had entered mass production and delivery. The company said Walker series orders had topped 800 million yuan since early 2025. UBTech targets annual capacity of 5,000 robots in 2026 and 10,000 in 2027, and works with automakers including BYD, Dongfeng Liuzhou, Geely and FAW-Volkswagen. In the U.S., Agility’s Digit has moved more than 100,000 totes at GXO’s Flowery Branch warehouse and logged more than 65,000 hours of real-world operation. Agility began trading on Nasdaq on Nov. 5. Tesla started Optimus production in Fremont in October.

The cover image is an AI-generated illustration, not a real photograph.