Metaplant America is already considered the most heavily automated automotive factory in the United States. The facility has more than 850 robots unloading auto parts, stamping out steel components, putting together car frames, and installing car doors, according to IEEE Spectrum. It also uses 300 automated guided vehicles to carry auto parts to the appropriate work stations while avoiding human workers.
Boston Dynamic’s famed four-legged robot, Spot, has also been deployed onsite to perform “exterior quality inspection” at Metaplant America’s weld shop. During a July 2026 visit to the facility, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter described seeing the Spot “robotic dogs probe their sensor-embedded noses to sniff out defects.”
Credit:
Jonathan Gitlin
A pair of Boston Dynamics Spot robots inspect a Hyundai Ioniq 5 body shell at the Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant outside Savannah, Georgia.
Credit:
Jonathan Gitlin
The Atlas humanoid robots would start out by sorting and organizing automotive parts when they first deploy to Metaplant America in 2028. But Jerald Roach, a general assembly executive at Hyundai’s Metaplant, told The AJC that the humanoid robots won’t pose a threat to the human workforce. Roach described human hands with their sense of feel and touch as being necessary for handling soft car parts such as hoses, wires, carpets, and trim panels.
Hyundai has also committed to employing 8,100 human workers in full-time roles at Metaplant America by 2031 as part of its economic development deal with Georgia. State and local leaders provided the automaker with an incentive package worth an estimated $2.1 billion to set up shop in Georgia. The AJC’s reporting found that Hyundai’s facility already employed more than 3,800 workers by the end of 2025.
But labor unions in both South Korea and the United States clearly want to see stronger commitments from automakers in the face of such automation efforts. The United Auto Workers recently criticized General Motors for installing about 50 new robot arms at the automaker’s flagship electric vehicle factory in Detroit after laying off more than 1,300 workers as a supposedly temporary measure.
During the UAW Constitutional Convention held in Detroit in June 2026, UAW President Shawn Fain also warned against “the threat of humanoid robotics and mass automation” undermining worker employment and compensation. The next several years will show whether humanoid robots do indeed prove cost-effective in comparison to their specialized industrial robot counterparts and human workers.
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