Now, however, it is a reality, offering not only quick and efficient work, but significant cost savings for both SMEs and larger companies. And at the heart of this revolution is pi4_robotics, a company based in Berlin, Germany, that not only makes and retails humanoid robots, but through its sister company Robozän, also hires them as staff.





“We developed workerbot, which is a humanoid factory worker, and in 2010 we offered the first version of that to the public,” explains pi4_robotics managing director Matthias Krinke.







Workerbot is a fully functioning robot, with a friendly, changeable face and arms which it uses to sort and inspect parts, lift items and perform other precise tasks. And while each workerbot is tailored to its specific role, like humans, they come in two basic forms.





“We have two workers: a man and a woman,” says Krinke. “The women, they have an arm length of up to 850mm and a payload of 5kg per arm, and the men, they have up to 1.4m long arms and they can lift up to 12kg.”