Mitsubishi Motors and Tokyo-based robotics startup Highlanders plan to mass-produce humanoid robots at Mitsubishi's Kyoto plant beginning in 2027. The automaker signed a memorandum of understanding to build the "HL Human" (also called "N") using idle space at the facility. The companies target a production rate of 1,000 units per month by the second half of 2027, using Mitsubishi's own assembly lines as the initial testing ground.
The HL Human stands 1.4 meters tall and carries a maximum payload of 3 kilograms. Highlanders prioritized dexterity over heavy lifting, equipping the robot with five-fingered hands designed to operate existing tools, buttons, and pedals. This allows the humanoid to perform assembly, parts handling, and light logistics without requiring factories to redesign their workstations. For heavier transport, the HL Human relies on a separate quadrupedal robot called the HLQ Pro.
The robots operate on Kepler v1.0, a 10-billion-parameter multimodal AI foundation model. The software utilizes a "Two Systems, One Brain" architecture. A deliberative cerebrum handles planning and decision-making, while a high-speed cerebellum manages balance, movement, and force control. A predictive world model fuses visual, tactile, and force data to anticipate physical interactions. Highlanders trains the system through simulation, teleoperation, and real-world data on its HISUI supercomputing cluster. Deployed robots feed anonymized data back through a pipeline called Artery to receive regular over-the-air updates.
Japan’s workforce declines by 900,000 people annually. By focusing on a compact, highly dexterous robot rather than a heavy-lifting generalist, this partnership attempts to automate skilled manual labor and keep Japanese automotive lines running as human factory workers disappear.