As GM swaps workers for robots in Detroit, Chicago's Automate show previews what's next

In Chicago this week, the Automate 2026 trade show opened Monday at McCormick Place with its first dedicated pavilion for humanoid robots. Meanwhile in Detroit, General Motors was reported to have added roughly 50 collaborative robots to run at its Factory Zero electric-vehicle plant - and, by the United Auto Workers' (UAW) count in the same report, more than 1,000 fewer people in the building. There is the event selling the technology and promise of a more efficient future for the region, while a global player delivers the reality of what it is like to live with it.

These indicate where automation in Midwest manufacturing now stands: the demos are quickly improving, but the hardest questions, including reliability on a real production line, and what the shift means for workers, remain unanswered.

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What Automate is, and why it exists

Automate is North America's largest robotics and automation event, produced by the Association for Advancing Automation, the industry's trade group. This year's edition ends today, June 25, with the organizers saying this was its biggest edition, with more than 1,000 exhibitors.

One new feature this year is a dedicated Humanoid Robot Pavilion, sponsored by chipmaker NVIDIA, alongside a separate Humanoid Robot Forum. This indicates that the question is no longer whether humanoid robots can exist, but how quickly a manufacturer can put them to work without disrupting the rest of their operations.

There is evidence behind this shift. According to TechTimes, Figure AI's BotQ facility has reached a production rate of one robot per hour; Boston Dynamics has begun shipping its electric Atlas; and Agility Robotics' Digit is already working at a Toyota plant in Canada under a Robots-as-a-Service contract. Humanoids are now being discussed as assets with delivery schedules and customers, no longer just prototypes.

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NVIDIA's pitch: be the layer underneath

NVIDIA is using the event to push what it calls "physical AI." In separate announcements earlier this year, the company has shared that it is working with robotics firms including ABB, Agility, FANUC and KUKA to move that technology into real deployments, using software tools such as Cosmos, its Isaac simulation framework and its Isaac GR00T models. It has also unveiled a reference humanoid for academic research built around Unitree hardware, Sharpa robotic hands and its Jetson Thor compute.

The underlying sales argument is that robots can be trained by demonstration rather than programmed line by line. NVIDIA's position appears to be that it wants to supply the infrastructure every robot runs on, as much as add its name to pavilions where the future is demonstrated as being already here.

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Doosan: from cobots to whole workflows

Meanwhile, Doosan Robotics is using the show to widen its pitch beyond the collaborative robots that are its core business. The company plans to debut "PalletizHD+," an AI-based palletizing package built on its PalletizOS software, while also displaying sanding, welding and end-of-line systems.

Doosan says the palletizing system uses AI-based pattern generation and its "Swift Move" path planning, can process up to 11 boxes a minute, and can move more than one box at a time depending on settings, with a smartphone-style interface for managing box data and stacking patterns. According to industry reports, the company is also bringing "Scan&Go 2.0," an upgraded version of a system it introduced at CES in January that, it says, uses physics-based AI and 3D vision so a robotic arm can handle tasks such as sanding and welding on its own.

The push has a corporate angle. Doosan said it merged with OneXia and its existing U.S. subsidiary late last year to form Doosan Robotics America, and is expanding local sites, production capacity and hiring. Chief executive Minpyo Kim told the website Asiae that the event is a chance to show the company moving from collaborative robots toward automation across entire workflows.

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Detroit: the same technology, a harder story

GM's Factory Zero is already running initiatives that take these event demos into the real world. While they’re not the first, recent reporting does indicate the impact on line workers. The plant's roughly 50 cobots - collaborative robots - help attach body panels as vehicles move down the assembly line, according to industry site AutoBlog.

GM has framed the move as modernization, with spokesman Kevin Kelly telling the NY Post that the company has been adding cobots across its manufacturing network and is using them at Factory Zero to improve "safety and ergonomics" while keeping production flexible and competitive.

The same story had the UAW framing the move in terms of job loss. Local 22 President James Cotton called the rollout a cost-cutting measure that takes work from union members, saying "Our manpower is being taken away from us." The union has filed grievances over the robots and raised safety concerns about machines working alongside people, according to the story.

The dispute lands during a rough stretch for the plant, with Factory Zero having seen repeated production pauses. When Crain's covered this GM story last week, they mentioned that labor hours needed to build a car have fallen sharply since the 1980s as UAW pay has risen, with another contract round due in 2028.

Such numbers underline the tension raised by this technology, with UAW President Shawn Fain quoted in the same story from a speech he shared online that workers are "in a fight for humanity." He also argued that productivity gains are not flowing back to employees. GM, meanwhile, reported $4.25 billion in first-quarter 2026 profit, up 22% from a year earlier.

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What it adds up to

For all the progress on display in Chicago, the Automate show's own materials concede that deployment is the expensive part. There is the "sim-to-real" gap, in which models behave one way in simulation and another on a factory floor, and the unsettled question of safety certification for robots working alongside people without barriers. The practical test is whether a machine can do the same job reliably, day after day, on someone else's line.

Detroit is showing how this plays out. The technology being sold seems to work well enough to put on a real EV line - and thus become a labor dispute. For a region that built much of the country's twentieth-century manufacturing base and its middle-class, the Midwest is now becoming both the shiny showroom and the actual proving ground for what comes next. Whether the gains are shared, and on what terms, are the questions that we’ll all find out the answers to soon enough.

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