Thus far, the humanoid robotics industry has been all guarantees and pilots. While essential within the eventual deployment of latest technology, these programs involve a small variety of robots and infrequently don’t graduate into anything more meaningful. On Thursday, nevertheless, Agility announced that it has entered right into a formal deal following a successful pilot with logistics giant GXO.
Digit’s first job can be moving plastic totes around a Georgia Spanx factory — which is most definitely not a euphemism. Neither party has revealed precisely how most of the bipedal robots can be pulling boxes off cobots and placing them onto conveyor belts, which likely means the figure continues to be on the small side. After we’re talking tens or a whole bunch of 1000’s, the parties involved would typically be wanting to share that info.
The systems are being leased as a part of a RaaS (robots-as-a-service) model, fairly than being purchased outright. This enables the client to defer the huge upfront costs of such a fancy system, while still getting access to support and software updates.
GXO began piloting Digit robots last 12 months. The logistics firm also recently announced a pilot cope with one in all Agility’s biggest competitors, Apptronik. It’s not clear how one will affect the opposite.
Peggy Johnson, who stepped into Agility’s CEO role in March, has stressed the firm’s give attention to ROI — a marked difference in a category where the outcomes are still largely theoretical.
“There can be many firsts within the humanoid robot market within the years to come back, but I’m extremely pleased with the undeniable fact that Agility is the primary with actual humanoid robots deployed at a customer site, generating revenue and solving real-world business problems,” Johnson said. “Agility has all the time been focused on the one metric that matters — delivering value to our customers by putting Digit to work — and this milestone deployment raises the bar for your entire industry.”
Oregon-based Agility has been ahead of the remaining of the market when it comes to development and deployment, so it’s not surprising to see the corporate be the primary to a different key milestone. In fact, this continues to be very much early days for the industry and no clear market leader has emerged.
Amazon began piloting Agility systems in its own warehouses last October, but neither company has made a proper announcement with regard to next steps.
