Industry
Embodied AI unveils AIR, a wheeled two-arm robot built to work beside factory staff
Swiss robotics startup Embodied AI unveiled AIR at Humanoid Europe 2026 in Munich on 6 November, a two-armed robot on a wheeled base that it says can work alongside factory staff without a safety cage, according to its announcement and Humanoids Daily.
Light arms, heavy torso
The company calls AIR a humanoid, but it has no legs: it is a torso, two arms and a head on wheels. Embodied AI keeps the motors and other heavy parts in the torso and drives the arms through cables, so the moving parts stay light and give way on contact. A conventional industrial arm is heavy and stiff, which is why it usually sits behind a fence or light curtain. The company has not published AIR's height, weight, reach, battery life or full payload.
Teleoperated first, autonomous later
A remote operator runs AIR from its first shift, and each shift is recorded as training data. The company says the robot takes the task over on its own within about a month. It reports a 95% average task success rate in paid pilots with a consumer electronics maker and an automotive and industrial technology supplier, neither of which it has named, and has not said how success is defined.
Who is behind it
Embodied AI is a 25-person spinout from Swiss university EPFL, based in Lausanne, led by chief executive Francesco Stella. It plans CE marking in 2027, when the EU's new Machinery Regulation takes effect, and says orders open after the Munich show. No price or delivery date has been published, and until it carries the CE mark AIR cannot be sold as a finished machine in the EU.