A humanoid machine called Apollo has just taken a tentative, slightly jerky, but significant step forward in the robot revolution.

The 5’8″ tall robot performed the first public demonstration in a real-world setting of a real-world task – in this case assembling an engine part – entirely autonomously.

Clicking two parts together with a twist of its servo-controlled wrists, and handing it to a human colleague is a basic task. But it’s also an important moment in the much-hyped world of human-like robot development.

“This is a really big day for us,” says Jeff Cardenas, chief executive of Apptronik, the US company behind Apollo.

“We’re excited to show this off, excited for the public to see the robot live and in person.”

Mercedes-Benz has announced a multimillion-pound investment in Apptronik and is trialling a handful of the humanoid robots at its factory in Berlin and another in Hungary.

Investors and industrial firms – particularly car makers with long experience of using robots in manufacturing – have been closely following the development of human-like robots.

The costs of small, lightweight components have fallen as artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms and computer vision technology have led to rapid advances in the field of robots that can emulate human movement and tasks.

But despite a rising number of increasingly impressive-looking cyborgs being unveiled by tech companies in the US and Asia, few have taken their first steps out of the lab.

The Apollo robot looks small and underpowered surrounded by the huge robotic arms that weld, bolt and inspect Mercedes’ latest cars at the Berlin-Marienfelde plant.

But hosting a robot with a human “form-factor” is more than just a photo opportunity, according to Mercedes-Benz.

“There’s one big advantage,” says Jorg Burzer, head of production and supply chain management at the German car maker.

“A humanoid robot is flexible, so you can basically introduce it to an assembly line or internal logistics or quality inspection… you can basically move it from one place to another.”

Introducing a new assembly line, or upgrading an old one with traditional robotic arms is a major investment.

A robot that can be adapted to a range of tasks and work alongside humans would avoid that investment.

With hands and feet like ours, they can operate tools and work in the same workspaces as people.

Apollo can lift more than 25kg and potentially perform repetitive tasks that are, in the words of humanoid robot developers, too “dull, dirty or dangerous” for humans.

The purpose of the trial is to establish which tasks humanoid robots can usefully do and help improve the machine learning and dexterity required to do more.

“We want to try to find out what is really possible,” says Mr Burzer.

“It’s also very important to test how a humanoid robot can be integrated in running production together with our colleagues working here every day.”

Read more:
Meet the penguins of the Falklands
Badenoch says UK 2050 net zero target is ‘impossible’
Two astronauts stuck in space set to return to Earth

Texas-based Apptronik is reluctant to make claims as bold as some of their rivals.

“Everyone’s ready for a robot to come into their home and do all of their laundry and all the things that they don’t want to do. But it’s very early on,” says Mr Cardenas.

“Take the analogy of the shift to the personal computer. We’re in the early ’80s so at the very beginning.”

Investors seem to believe in a robot-dominated future. One recent forecast sees the humanoid market growing 20-fold in the next eight years, with predictions of a population of tens of millions of the machines by 2050.

One major hurdle is the AI brains behind them.

Apptronik admits a truly “general purpose” robot capable of functioning outside a predictable and controlled environment like a factory won’t be possible until computer intelligence can understand the real world like we do.

So-called “world models” are very much a work in progress for AI developers.

So the important questions, like when humanoid robots will steal our jobs, or whether they will go rogue and rise up against us can wait… for a little while at least.

One of Tesla’s earliest investors has told Sky News Elon Musk should step aside as its chief executive unless he gives up his new government job.

Ross Gerber said in an interview with Sky’s Business Live that the tycoon and adviser to Donald Trump had lost his focus given his widening interests and was now too “divisive”.

He cited Musk’s post-election role at the helm of the Trump administration’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

It has attracted public anger, and protests, over planned swingeing cuts to federal government staff.

Money latest: Good news for holidaymakers heading to US

Mr Gerber said: “I think Tesla needs a new CEO and I decided today I was going to start saying it and so this is the first show that I’m saying it on.

“It’s time for somebody to run Tesla. The business has been neglected for too long. There are too many important things Tesla is doing, so either Elon should come back to Tesla and be the CEO of Tesla and give up his other jobs or he should focus on the government and keep doing what he is doing but find a suitable CEO of Tesla.”

Mr Gerber told presenter Darren McCaffrey that the business was “absolutely” in crisis and the appointment was among several reasons he had sold off a substantial number of shares in recent months.

A slump began shortly before Mr Trump took office, as the first salvoes of the president’s trade war were being threatened.

Tesla’s market value has plunged by more than $800bn since December and it was a further 4% down in US trading on Tuesday.

The business has been struggling on several fronts.

Electric car demand appears to have peaked across key Western markets despite steep discounting to boost appeal at a time of continued strain on consumer budgets.

Read more:
What’s gone wrong at Tesla?
Tesla charging stations set on fire in Musk backlash

Also in the mix is cheap Chinese competition nibbling away at Tesla’s market share.

Add the potential for heightened costs due to Mr Trump’s trade war, it is of little surprise that investors are concerned.

Mr Gerber said that while Tesla’s products were undoubtedly the best around, Mr Musk only had 24 hours in the day and he had split his time too thinly since his purchase of Twitter in 2022.

He added that his social media posts and work with the president since had brought too much negative publicity to Tesla.

“The company’s reputation has just been destroyed by Elon Musk”, he said.

“Sales are plummeting so, yeh, it’s a crisis. You literally can’t sell the best product in the market place because the CEO is so divisive”.

The air is suddenly full of talk about supermarket price wars.

Some £4.4bn was wiped from the stock market valuations of Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Marks & Spencer on Monday following comments from Allan Leighton, the executive chairman of Asda, on Friday in which he promised the grocer was planning its biggest price cuts in 25 years.

Mr Leighton, who returned to Asda last November, said there was a “war chest” available to Asda and indicated he was prepared to “materially” forego profits in the short term to win back market share.

Money blog: ‘My Deliveroo order was wrong and it refused to replace it. Is that allowed?’

He told The Times: “We have a long way to go. We’re three months into what is going to be three years of really getting the basics of the business right and getting the business to outperform the rest of the industry on a like-for-like basis.

“That’s what restores our market share and profitability. It ain’t going to happen overnight.”

Those remarks are rightly being taken seriously by investors – by the market close on Monday Tesco shares had fallen by nearly 15% since Friday morning and those of Marks & Spencer and Sainsbury’s by 10% and 9% apiece.

That is because nobody, arguably, knows Asda better than Mr Leighton.

What’s gone wrong at Asda?

It was he, along with current Marks & Spencer chairman Archie Norman, who rescued Asda from collapse in the early 1990s before selling the business to US giant Walmart in 1999.

Initially, that transaction appeared to go well, with Asda wresting the number two slot in the UK grocery market from Sainsbury’s in 2003.

But Walmart’s insistence on preserving margins gradually saw its share eroded and the number two slot recaptured by Sainsbury’s.

By 2019, it was clear Asda was no longer regarded as a core asset by Walmart. That was the year an attempt was made, blocked by competition regulators, to merge the business with Sainsbury’s.

Worse was to follow.

In October 2020, Walmart offloaded a majority stake in the grocer to the petrol forecourts billionaires Mohsin and Zuber Issa and the private equity firm TDR Capital.

The debt taken on during the takeover blunted Asda’s competitiveness and resulted in it losing market share – mainly to Tesco and Sainsbury’s but also to the German hard discounters Aldi and Lidl.

It went through a series of managers before TDR Capital bought out Zuber Issa in June last year to take a majority 67.5% stake while Mohsin Issa, who retains 22.5% of the business, relinquished the day-to-day running of the business.

A new era

Cue the return of Mr Leighton.

Within weeks, after Asda was the worst-performing supermarket over the Christmas period, he had announced a ‘Big Jan Price Drop’ price-cutting campaign which saw average price reductions of 26% on selected products.

That was dismissed by rivals, most notably Ken Murphy, the chief executive of market leader Tesco, as not representing a genuine price war.

Mr Leighton’s response has been to reintroduce the ‘Rollback’ price-cutting promotions he and Mr Norman introduced in the 1990s in a bid to revive the spirit of the old ‘That’s Asda Price’ campaigns, complete with shoppers patting their back pockets, backed by heavy newspaper and television advertising.

It is being seen by industry experts as a wider price-cutting initiative than the more limited campaign Asda had been running to ‘price match’ Aldi and Lidl.

While the price cuts are the most eye-catching initiatives, so far as consumers will be concerned, Mr Leighton has also spent £43m on extending opening hours for some stores and has also bolstered his management team.

The most important hire was David Lepley, the group retail director at Morrisons, who was appointed in February as chief supply chain officer – a recognition that Asda needed to sharpen up on its product availability.

Can the new boss work his magic again?

The big question many in the industry have is whether Mr Leighton – who has since leaving Asda in 2000 had a spell as chairman of the Co-op – can work his magic again.

The grocery market now is very different from the one in the 1990s when Tesco was only in the foothills of the explosive growth it was later to enjoy, first under Lord MacLaurin and then under Sir Terry Leahy, while Sainsbury’s was going through a fallow period.

Morrisons, which acquired the old Safeway chain in 2004, was also a much smaller business than it is today.

Moreover, in the 1990s, the hard discounters Aldi and Lidl – who entered the UK in 1990 and 1994 respectively – had a miniscule market presence.

Hard discounting in grocery retail was also less developed than today with the old Kwik-Save chain its leading exponent.

In other words, the climate was ripe for a player like Asda to seize share with big, well-targeted price cuts, snappy advertising and, crucially, excellent product availability.

Compare that with today.

A different time

Tesco’s market position is as dominant as it has ever been while Sainsbury’s is a strongly entrenched number two in the market and a revived Morrisons, under Rami Baitiéh, has also returned to growth.

Aldi and Lidl, although the former has recently seen its market share slipping, also remain formidable competitors.

Tesco and Sainsbury’s, who have benefited more than anyone from Asda’s travails, have the most to lose in the event of a turnaround. But they are also better placed than anyone else to withstand one: Tesco’s Clubcard is arguably the world’s most successful supermarket loyalty and rewards scheme and provides the grocer with data and insights that no one else has, enabling it to react rapidly to changes in the market or to shopper habits.

Read more:
The town where almost a third are economically inactive
The way economic data is collected is changing – here’s why it matters

Sainsbury’s is trying to do something similar with Nectar, while both schemes are increasingly able to personalise offers to individual customers, entrenching loyalty.

That may become even more important if, as Simon Roberts, Sainsbury’s chief executive, asserts, the ‘big weekly shop’ is becoming more important as working from home becomes less common.

Tesco and Sainsbury’s sharper than they used to be

As the renowned sector watcher Clive Black, analyst at investment bank Shore Capital puts it: “We need to remember that the listed players are better grocers than Asda with a broader customer set, stronger balance sheets and a will to remain competitive”.

He points out that, apart from the advantages bestowed by their loyalty programmes, Tesco and Sainsbury’s are sharper on price than they used to be, are able to price-match Aldi meaningfully and offer better ranges and more choice than both the German pair and Asda.

That view is shared by the retail team at brokerage Jefferies which has questioned whether Asda’s price cuts can deliver the increase in grocery volumes in the time it requires without a fresh injection of capital from shareholders.

What about consumers?

Will this be good news for consumers? Possibly.

But the grocery sector will be hit hard by the forthcoming increase in the national living wage and, more especially, the rise in employer’s national insurance contributions announced by Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, in her autumn budget.

Those measures will not only push up the costs of supermarkets but also those of their suppliers. Those higher costs will at least be partly passed on to customers.

So too will be the cost of implementing new recycling regulations due in October.

And, all the while, food price inflation is picking up in staples such as eggs, milk and butter. The British Retail Consortium is expecting food price inflation to be north of 4% during the second half of this year.

Accordingly, while Asda’s price war may bring some relief, it feels more likely at present as if it will merely result in lower price rises than British shoppers would otherwise have experienced rather than an outright drop in prices across the board.