Xiaomi says its CyberOne 02 humanoid robots have completed eight consecutive hours of work at a Xiaomi EV factory, a big step up from earlier short trials. The robots sorted and placed parts while working alongside autonomous mobile robots, or AMRs, which carry materials around the plant. Xiaomi calls it the first time the robots have shown production-line-level operational capability. The robots run on the company's Xiaomi-Robotics-1 foundation model, which was pre-trained on 100,000 hours of UMI data.

The numbers show how fast this has moved. Earlier this year, Xiaomi's president described the robots as "interns" and reported shifts of about three hours, and an August trial showed a 90.2% success rate on a nut-installation task. An eight-hour shift is a much tougher test of battery life, reliability, and consistency. Still, this is a single company's announcement from its own factory, and details like success rates, human supervision, and how often the robots needed help haven't been released. The big question is whether this is the start of real humanoid workers on assembly lines or still a very polished pilot.