Toyota to Deploy 400,000 Robots at Global Plants, Featuring Embodied Learning Robot ELEY

Toyota Motor Group is advancing a large-scale robot deployment plan, aiming to introduce 400,000 self-developed robots at about 60 factories worldwide. The plan covers 150,000 robots at Toyota's own plants and 250,000 at group companies' facilities.

The core product of the initiative is ELEY (Embodied Learning Robot for Enhanced Yield), a robot weighing about 50 kg with a wheeled base and two-finger gripper. ELEY can learn fine manipulation skills by observing workers. In mid-September, it demonstrated folding T-shirts at Toyota's European regional headquarters, achieving near-perfect accuracy after approximately 1,500 training trials.

Toyota Executive Vice President Hiroki Nakajima said the goal is to create a world where robots coexist with humans rather than replace them. Workers can wear assistive tools modeled on ELEY's fingers, allowing the robot to learn via visual observation and continuously refine its actions. Toyota also plans to share training data across global plants so robots can quickly acquire the same skills, and eventually robots could transfer mastered methods to new employees, forming a loop from "humans teaching robots" to "robots teaching humans."

Toyota and its group companies plan to invest about 1 trillion yen annually from 2028 to renovate and rebuild global plants. Toyota currently operates about 60 plants worldwide, with about 18,000 "takumi" skilled workers whose manufacturing experience serves as an important data source for robot learning.