Digit, the flagship robotic at Oregon-based Agility Robotics, raised its hand to wave on the viewers on the Fortune Brainstorm Tech in Park Metropolis, Utah, as CEO Peggy Johnson defined to the gang why the robotic’s knees have been, properly, backward—like chicken legs.
“Knees get in the best way of selecting issues up,” she defined to Fortune tech reporter Jason Del Rey, mentioning that Digit was designed to work in huge warehouses, lifting issues up and placing issues down.
Now, Digit is placing its backward-knees design, ten years within the making, to good use: The droid lately bought employed at its first actual job—selecting up totes at a Spanx facility in Connecticut and placing them onto conveyors. The work is a part of a multi-year cope with logistics supplier GXO Logistics, and Johnson stated the corporate is already getting month-to-month income from the robot-as-a-service mission.
Johnson, who has solely been within the CEO position for 4 months, stated that there are about 1.1 million unfilled warehouse jobs within the US that require the repetitive, mundane duties Digit is doing. “No one desires these jobs,” she stated, including that repetitively lifting heavy weights results in employees getting damage, and in the end quitting their warehouse jobs. “That’s the place the accidents are available. That’s the place the turnover is available in,” she stated. Warehouse workers that used to do bodily work at the moment are changing into the managers of the robots, she added: “They should be upskilled.”
Stuart Isett/Fortune
Agility Robotics, which spun out of analysis at Oregon State College, raised $150 million in a Sequence C spherical in April 2024 as the corporate ready to deploy Digit in logistics and warehouse environments. Now that Digit has been launched into the wild of the warehouse, Johnson stated the corporate is engaged on a rollout for its subsequent technology of Digit to return within the fall. Because of a manufacturing facility the corporate lately in-built Salem, Oregon, the corporate will roll out tons of of Digit robots, and 1000’s are deliberate for the next 12 months—with a watch in the direction of a aim of 10,000 to satisfy rising demand.
But it surely’s not nearly getting the robots to stroll—backward knees and all, Johnson emphasised. As a substitute, it’s in regards to the robotic having the ability to step into an operation’s current workflow. “We have to enter a company IT infrastructure and make it work for them,” she stated.
In April 2024, Agility Robotics confirmed that it laid off a “small quantity” of workers due to “ongoing efforts to construction the corporate for achievement” whereas ramping up manufacturing of Digit. Johnson stated that the corporate is at the moment elevating capital for an additional spherical of funding down the road.
However in the meanwhile, she stated, she is attempting to determine the perfect office for the handful of Digit robots at the moment accessible. “We’ve got loads of curiosity from automotive, retail grocers,” she stated. “I’m attempting to determine which path to go in.”
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