Perhaps a number of years from now, the halls of the Georgia World Congress Center might be peppered with humanoid robots the week of Modex. In 2024, nonetheless, Digit stands alone at the provide chain present. It’s a testomony to Agility’s wholesome head begin over opponents like Figure, Tesla, 1X and Apptronik. This time final yr at Modex (the Chicago model of the convention), Digit had one thing of an industrial automation popping out occasion. A line of the bipedal robots had been shifting totes to a close-by conveyor belt at choose occasions all through the week.
This week in Atlanta, a rotating solid of eight Digits are working every day from present opening to shut. This time, nonetheless, the blue and silver robots are doing one thing a bit totally different. The demos showcase lineside replenishment and tote retrieval with a move rack designed for automotive manufacturing. Agility tells Ztoog that it’s at the moment working with automotive clients — although it has but to launch any names.
Famously, Ford was amongst Agility’s first proponents, saying a partnership approach again at CES 2020. Ultimately, plans to place Digit to work making last-mile deliveries fizzled, as the firm as an alternative pivoted focus to the nearer-term challenge of warehouse staffing. That proved to be a canny transfer, as labor figures nonetheless have but to return post-COVID. Former Agility CEO Damion Shelton advised me final week that last-mile remains to be on the desk, however there’s greater than sufficient to concentrate on in the warehouse and manufacturing sectors to maintain the firm occupied.
Putting collectively a C-suite has been an essential piece of the firm’s progress over the previous 12 months. Co-founders Shelton and Jonathan Hurst have shifted roles, from CEO and CTO to president and chief robotics officer, respectively. Every week in the past as we speak, former Magic Leap CEO Peggy Johnson took the chief government function over from Shelton. Last yr, the firm named Fetch founder and CEO Melonee Wise to the CTO function and introduced former Apple and Ford government Aindrea Campbell in as COO.
The management adjustments level to an organization taking commercialization extra critically. They additionally put Agility in uncommon air amongst prime robotics corporations, with ladies in 5 of its 9 C-suite roles.
Agility is ramping up manufacturing volumes, with plans to hit “high double-digit” manufacturing of its bipedal robotic by finish of yr. This week at Modex, the firm took the wraps off Agility Arc, deployment and fleet administration software program for Digit.
“The automation platform has all of the things you would expect from a fleet management system, in terms of battery, charging management, workflow management and robot tasking,” Wise tells Ztoog. “But it also has the other aspects that you need for deploying and configuring a system and remotely monitoring and supporting the system. It’s a single pane of glass that allows you to basically do everything related to managing a fleet of Digits.”
Johnson, who beforehand helmed Magic Leap’s shaky pivot into enterprise, says the new enterprise software program gave her confidence that her new firm has surer footing than her final.
“The thing that was really encouraging when I learned about the new cloud automation system is that it’s such a sign of the maturation of the company,” she says. “This is not just a device, it’s something that’s meant to integrate. So often at [Johnson’s former employer] Microsoft, that would be the trip-up point. You would have some isolated system over here that wasn’t integrated with everything else and didn’t provide the value that it could. So, the fact that it will be able to integrate with WMS systems and other things the company is already using is a big weight off them.”
Image Credits: Brian Heater
For Johnson, Modex has been a large studying expertise. She spoke to us final week from Japan, the place she had just lately competed in the Tokyo marathon. She hopped on a aircraft again to the States over the weekend particularly to get a first-hand view of the provide chain/logistics world of which she is now a component. “I wanted to make sure I was here to see not only the customers, but the environment the devices work in. I’m going to spend a lot of time walking around today and immerse myself in that.”
Johnson’s major pitch as CEO is a fast path to ROI. That’s achievable in no small half to the undeniable fact that Digit is out there by a RaaS (robotics-as-a-service) mannequin, which has change into an more and more fashionable technique to persuade corporations to take the leap. Customers can now pilot these techniques with out having to fret about large upfront prices.
It’s these clients who in the end form Digit’s future. The mannequin on the ground demonstrating an automotive workflow has a brand new pair of finish effectors. Rather than the flipper-style appendages the firm has been showcasing, this Digit has 4 digits of its personal on every hand, with two pairs of hooked fingers going through in reverse instructions. This isn’t dexterous cell manipulation, nonetheless. Instead, it’s designed to do the factor that Digit has been doing all alongside: transporting totes.
The totes listed here are fairly large nonetheless (as is customized on the automotive line), prohibiting the robotic from embracing it with an arm on either side. Instead the effectors grasp the entrance of the totes. This methodology additionally affords a extra secure grip on a field that usually has heavy, untethered objects rolling round inside.
In the not too distant future, Wise envisions a model of Digit that may swap out its finish effectors as wanted.
“When you look at the end effector specifically, there’s about 60 years of prior art,” she says. “All of [Modex], if you look around, all of these robot arms have different end effectors. That’s a very well understood thing. There’s something called ‘end of arm tooling.’ It’s swappable. What we’re going to be driving toward as a product is having swappable end of arm tooling and eventually make that an automated process.”
With what could possibly be perceived as a dig at some of the humanoid robotic competitors, Shelton notes, “but interestingly, 0% of the solutions are five-fingered, 27-degrees of freedom hands.” He provides, “there have been some of our competitors who have been on the record saying that they are using a five-fingered hand basically as a branding exercise.”
As far as what the competitors ought to be centered on, Wise believes Agility’s friends ought to middle on security — an enormous concern when introducing new applied sciences right into a warehouse setting. “We need to, collectively as an industry, get our safety story straight,” she says. “We as an industry need to come together and decide what the safety norms are.”
Johnson provides that corporations have to concentrate on the job at hand. “Stay focused on the here and now and what can be done,” she says. “Everyone needs a roadmap, but stay focused and prove it out.”