Schaeffler Uses Robots to Build Joints for Robots

Six robots at five stations, an assembly line and a digital twin that runs through every process in advance: this is the new Lighthouse Factory that the German supplier Schaeffler has opened in Taicang, China. There, humanoid robots build the joints for humanoid robots. Across about 7,500 square meters, the machines pick up components, sort them and assemble them into linear and rotary actuators, the drive units that move a joint. Afterward, they are tested, labeled and packaged.

Control runs through a digital twin, a virtual model of the plant. Sensors capture the production process and show the status of the equipment and manufacturing. This makes it possible to test and optimize production processes before they reach the real line. According to Schaeffler, development times are thereby shortened.

In the training and data collection center, the robots are prepared for industrial use. They learn under conditions similar to those found at the about 100 production sites of the Schaeffler Group. Newly learned skills can be tested immediately on the assembly line. In this way, the laboratory becomes a working operation in which robots learn and work at the same time.

The step follows a plan. In January 2026, Schaeffler announced that it would deploy several hundred humanoid robots in its plants over the next five years. In May 2026, an agreement with the robot manufacturer Humanoid was added, which envisions a four-digit number of robots by 2032. Schaeffler expects this to bring a higher degree of automation and more efficient processes.

The first beneficiary is the group itself: it can equip its plants with robots more quickly and manufacture its own actuators in large numbers. For customers and other robot builders, this means that joint components could in future come from series production; whether and to what extent this will happen cannot be determined from the information available. The figures come from Schaeffler itself; independent measurements or practical reports from the hall are not yet available. Whether the targets for 2032 will be met will only become clear from the production volumes in the coming years.