Toyota to Deploy 400,000 Humanoid Robots at Factories

Toyota Motor Corporation is preparing to put 400,000 humanoid robots to work across its own factories and key suppliers, according to a report by Nikkei Keizai Shimbun that was cited by South Korea's Robot Newspaper (로봇신문). The plan is tied to the rebuilding and renovation of aging Toyota Group plants, with the goal of creating workplaces where humanoid robots operate side by side with human employees.

One of the humanoid robots Toyota has developed for this effort is called ELEY, short for "Embodied Learning robot for Enhanced Yield." ELEY has two fingers and weighs about 50 kg. It draws power from a battery and a power cord rather than running fully wireless, and instead of walking on two legs, it moves around on wheels. A photo accompanying the report, credited to Car Watch, shows an ELEY unit folding and organizing clothing.

According to the report, Toyota intends to invest 1 trillion yen every year starting in 2028 to deploy the 400,000 humanoid robots across 60 factories worldwide. Of that total, 150,000 units are earmarked for Toyota itself and the broader Toyota Group, while the remaining 250,000 will be placed with supply-chain partners.

The humanoids will be powered by generative AI called LBM, or Large Behavior Models — a category of AI trained to generate complex physical actions and behaviors, similar in spirit to how large language models generate text. LBM is being developed by the Toyota Research Institute, the Toyota Group's dedicated research arm. Toyota's stated aim is to install LBM-equipped humanoids at its own plants, across the wider Toyota Group, and at supplier facilities, then link all of these production systems end-to-end (E2E) — meaning connecting every stage of the manufacturing chain into a single continuous flow. Toyota is calling this integrated vision "Factory Automation 3.0."

If executed at the scale described, the initiative would represent one of the largest industrial humanoid robot deployments announced to date, spanning not just Toyota's own assembly lines but a significant portion of its supplier network as well.