Agility Robotics has built a “RoboFab” facility about 30 miles from the company’s headquarters in Oregon to expand production of its bipedal robot Digit.
According to the private company, it is the first factory dedicated to building humanoid robots, and it has already started testing Digit with high-profile customers such as Amazon and GXO Logistics.
“It’s been in production for about a year,” Peggy Johnson, CEO of Agility Robotics, said in an interview. “The 70,000-square-foot factory has a capacity of 10,000 units a year. We will get there in the next few years.”
Digit is designed to take on repetitive and mundane manufacturing tasks, helping to bridge the labor gap in logistics.
“There are over a million unfilled jobs in logistics alone. Robots like Digit can step in and take those tasks away from them,” Johnson said.
“What we see is that this is often a part of the job that they don’t enjoy. We can offload it and give the person more time in the day to learn new skills,” she added.
Agility has raised $190 million since it was first founded in 2015.
“In the next generation, we will integrate what is called collaborative security, where you can have humanoid robots working alongside humans. We will integrate artificial intelligence more fully and, of course, we will have the ability to recharge ourselves through our digital technologies .Stand up,” Johnson said.
Digit’s fifth-generation machines, embedded with artificial intelligence and large language and robotics-based models, will be trained on new skills, such as following orders throughout the day and performing tasks without human interference.
Johnson said the ultimate goal is to enable robots to build future versions of themselves.
Watch the video above for a closer look at the Digit and RoboFab factories.
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