(PatriotWise.com) — An Oregon robotics company plans to mass-produce humanoid robots to do lifting, hauling, and moving for large companies like Amazon, Axios reported.
Agility Robotics said its new manufacturing facility in Salem, Oregon, would be the first to mass-produce nimbler, more versatile robots than the current industrial robots in use.
Agility’s humanoid robot is called Digit. In 2024, the company plans to open its RoboFab manufacturing facility, which Agility CEO Damion Shelton described as “the world’s first purpose-built humanoid robot factory,” to mass-produce Digit.
Shelton, who is the co-founder of Agility Robotics, told Axios that the company has made it a priority to get the humanoid robots manufactured “as fast as possible.” The company hopes to have “general-purpose” humanoid robots mass-produced “as soon as we can.”
According to Agility, the company already has a backlog of orders for Digit, which it describes as the first commercially available humanoid robot built for working in a warehouse.
Since its founding in 2016, Agility has produced only 100 robots at its Tangent, Oregon, headquarters. The company plans to move production of its Digit robot to the new 70,000-square-foot RoboFab manufacturing facility in Salem in the coming months.
Production in the new facility will begin in the hundreds. Eventually, however, Agility plans to increase production capacity to around 10,000 Digit robots a year, Shelton told Axios.
Agility Robotics offers a partner program for companies. By buying into the Partner Program, companies will have input in customizing Digit’s capabilities to meet their own logistical needs. Participating companies will also get their Digit models delivered in 2024 rather than waiting for RoboFab’s broader 2025 delivery date.
The Digit robot is 140 pounds and stands 5’9” tall. It is capable of walking itself to a power source and plugging itself in when it needs to recharge.
Tye Brady, Amazon’s chief roboticist, told Axios that the online retailer has been working with Agility Robotics since April 2022. Amazon announced in October that it was testing Digit at a Seattle laboratory.
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