Swiss startup Embodied AI has unveiled AIR, a two-armed mobile robot designed to work alongside factory employees without requiring a safety cage. The company said AIR initially operates under remote supervision before learning to perform assigned tasks independently within about a month. 

Embodied AI reported an average task success rate of 95 percent across paid manufacturing pilots, including deployments with companies in the consumer electronics and automotive sectors.

“Safety and reliability are non-negotiable requirements of physical AI to enter the real world at scale. These are the principles that guided the design of AIR,” said Francesco Stella, co-founder and CEO of Embodied AI, in a statement. 

AIR is a two-armed mobile robot designed to perform manufacturing tasks alongside factory workers without requiring a conventional safety cage.

Developed by a 25-person team spun out of the Swiss technical university EPFL, the robot combines a torso, two lightweight arms, and a wheeled base. Unlike conventional industrial robots that rely on rigid structures and external safety barriers, AIR uses a compliant mechanical design intended to reduce the risk of injury during accidental contact.

The robot’s architecture centers on keeping heavy components inside its torso while using a tendon-driven mechanism to operate its arms. Cables transmit movement from the motors to the arms, reducing the mass of the moving components. This arrangement allows the arms to remain lightweight and give way when they encounter an obstacle or make contact with a person.

The design is intended to address a major limitation of conventional factory automation.

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