LG and NVIDIA plan bipedal humanoid and Tennessee factory trials

LG and NVIDIA announced a bipedal humanoid development programme on 14 August 2026, targeting a public unveiling in the first quarter of 2027. An MoU signed the previous day also covers validation of wheeled CLOiD robots at LG Electronics’ washing-machine manufacturing line in Tennessee during 2026, before potential expansion to other factories, homes and commercial premises.

The biped will use NVIDIA Jetson Thor onboard computing, Isaac GR00T humanoid models and Halos for Robotics safety technology. LG plans to combine actuators from LG Electronics, sensors from LG Innotek and batteries from LG Energy Solution. LG CNS’s PhysicalWorks platform will support field-data collection, synthetic-data generation, training and verification; manufacturing observations will also feed LG’s own robot foundation model under development.

LG had introduced CLOiD at CES in January as a domestic robot with a wheeled base, height-adjusting torso, two seven-degree-of-freedom arms and five independently actuated fingers per hand. Demonstrations covered appliance interaction, food preparation and laundry handling. Its visual-language and action models connect object understanding with physical tasks, while the base draws on LG’s robot-vacuum and Q9 navigation work. The same January announcement introduced the AXIUM actuator brand, linking LG’s motor, drive and reducer engineering to robotics components.

The Tennessee programme will evaluate the wheeled platform in production conditions while the biped remains in development. A joint technical and business task force will oversee research, site validation and commercialisation, with factory experience informing robot performance and subsequent deployment decisions.