AI
Industry adoption and strategic deployment Virtually every sector is now evaluating robotics in some capacity.“ Obviously robotics is not new,” Pascal notes.“ But what is new is that fact we have put AI into robots and given them the possibility to become autonomous whereas before they were trained to do something the same way for their whole life.”
A Capgemini study – Physical AI: Taking Human-Robot Collaboration to the Next Level – revealed 67 % of surveyed organisations view physical AI as a game-changing transformation for their industry.
“ The scenarios that most of our clients are looking into mainly fall into two categories,” Pascal says.“ The first is physical AI that can be used for tasks that would present an element of risk to humans – environments where it is better to send a machine. Usually, these are tasks that were designed to be performed by humans though, so that’ s why they need humanoid robots.”
For instance, Capgemini’ s work alongside Orano in the nuclear sector involves deploying robots to hazardous areas, sparing human workers from dangerous environments. Because the work requires interfacing with existing control panels and operating manual buttons, a standard wheeled machine is insufficient; multifingered dexterity is essential.
“ In those kinds of scenarios you would need a robot with the form of a humanoid,” Pascal says.
“THERE’ S A TIME AND PLACE FOR HUMANOID ROBOTS”
Pascal Brier Group Chief Information Officer Capgemini
The second primary deployment model focuses on high-volume, physically repetitive or heavy-labour tasks.
“ Work in retail, warehouses, navel and shipment, logistics – these are all industries where someone needs to take something and put it somewhere else, or sort objects,” Pascal says.“ That’ s where we can split the job so the interesting part humans can do and the robot takes on the manual, repetitive, boring task.”
This shift toward automating repetitive logistics tasks is accelerating rapidly across automotive manufacturing. BMW Group, for instance, has intensified its integration of physical AI by deploying humanoid robots directly into production workflows.
Following an 11-month deployment of Figure AI’ s humanoid robot( Figure 02) handling heavy sheet-metal parts in the body shop at Plant Spartanburg in Greer, South Carolina, BMW is now introducing its successor, Figure 03, to handle complex logistics sequencing.
122 October 2026