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The humanoid race is continuous to warmth up. Agility Robotics kicked off the week by naming Peggy Johnson its chief government officer. Johnson is a veteran expertise chief who most lately served as CEO of Magic Leap, which produces augmented actuality headsets. She led the corporate’s shift from client to enterprise, recapitalized the corporate and extra.
Agility Robotics co-founder Damion Shelton has served as CEO because the firm’s founding in 2015. Shelton will now be the corporate’s president and a part of Johnson’s management group. Johnson will information Agility’s subsequent part of progress because it expands business deployments, broadens its product portfolio, and prepares to fabricate Digit at scale.
Earlier than Magic Leap, Johnson spent six years as government vp of enterprise growth at Microsoft. She reported on to CEO Satya Nadella and was answerable for driving strategic partnerships and transactions to speed up progress for the corporate and its clients. Johnson launched M12, Microsoft’s first company enterprise fund that in three years had added greater than 80 firms to its portfolio.
“Peggy Johnson’s lengthy observe report of engineering and enterprise success at Qualcomm and Microsoft, and her latest achievements driving change as CEO of Magic Leap, make her the right chief to take Agility via the transition from cutting-edge expertise startup to main world robotics firm. I couldn’t be extra excited to have her be part of us,” mentioned Shelton. “I additionally wish to acknowledge the unbelievable work of our workers and our management group in driving Agility’s success thus far. With Peggy on the helm, Agility can convey robotics to new heights.”
Agility Robotics CEO Peggy Johnson
Previous to Microsoft, she spent 24 years at Qualcomm, the place she served as a member of the corporate’s government committee and held numerous management positions throughout engineering, gross sales, advertising, and enterprise growth. She was answerable for main the Web Providers division, which launched a cellular app downloading platform, BREW, in 2001. BREW enabled the obtain of billions of apps to cell phones, which enhanced Qualcomm’s chip gross sales and produced over $1 billion in income from app gross sales.
“I’m thrilled to be becoming a member of the best robotics group on the planet,” mentioned Johnson. “In a area cluttered with ‘demo-ware’ and hype, Agility stands aside for having resolutely, steadily, and remarkably made a human-centric robotic that really works—and in demanding buyer environments. Damion Shelton and his distinctive group have positioned the corporate for world scale and progress throughout industries. Collectively, we are going to make Agility the world’s most trusted maker of robots which might be as useful to staff as they’re useful to backside traces. That is Agility’s time.”
Digit is the world’s solely bipedal robotic at present delivering productive work for purchasers. Additionally it is the one deployment-ready bipedal robotic that’s engineered to adjust to OSHA’s stringent security requirements and demonstrated to run giant AI fashions to adapt dynamically to new duties.
That is one other important transfer for Agility Robotics because it gears as much as manufacture its Digit humanoid at scale. In Could 2023, the corporate named Melonee Sensible CTO. Sensible offered autonomous cellular robotic maker (AMR) Fetch Robotics to Zebra Applied sciences in 2021 for $290 million.
Digit humanoid leads means
The Digit humanoid stands 5 ft. 9 in. (1.75 m) tall and may carry payloads as much as 35 lb. (16 kg). Digit has been in growth for a number of years now, however in late 2023 Amazon introduced it’s testing Digit in an R&D warehouse close to Seattle. The preliminary job is to assist with tote recycling.
GXO Logistics, the world’s largest pure-play contract logistics supplier, is additionally testing Digit. Additionally it is being examined for tote recycling at a Spanx facility in Flowery Department, Ga. On this pilot, Digit is shifting totes off of AMRs and onto a conveyor. The AMRs, which seem like Chucks from 6 River Methods, convey the packed totes to a switch station. Digit then makes use of its notion system to detect the AMR has arrived.
Later this yr, Agility will open RoboFab, a 70,000-square-foot robotic manufacturing facility in Salem, Oregon. Agility anticipates manufacturing capability of tons of of Digit robots within the first yr, with the aptitude to scale to greater than 10,000 robots per yr at this location. Agility mentioned Digit is engineered to fulfill the security necessities for deployment in OSHA-regulated industries.
Jonathan Hurst, co-founder and chief robotic officer of Agility Robotics, will keynote the Robotics Summit & Expo, which runs Could 1 and a pair of in Boston and is produced by The Robotic Report. The occasion expects greater than 5,000 attendees and is designed to assist robotics engineers overcome the technical challenges of constructing business robots.
Humanoid race heating up
Practically a dozen firms worldwide launched humanoid prototypes in 2023. That features Determine AI, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based firm that final week raised $675 million in Collection B funding.
Ash Sharma, managing director at Work together Evaluation, has mentioned warehousing presents humanoids the right mixture of repetitiveness and menial work, coupled with an absence of standardization and an absence of uniformity of issues dealt with. For firms working achievement facilities with a large product combine or fluctuating demand, the pliability of humanoid robots may ship an answer to the continuing labor and abilities disaster within the logistics business.
He added that Work together Evaluation’ analysis suggests the pliability and scalability humanoid robots supply might be a doable reply to ongoing labor and abilities shortages. Nonetheless, it doesn’t come with out issues, and it’s but to be seen whether or not these will probably be simply overcome to see their fast deployment in warehouses.
The Worldwide Federation of Robotics (IFR) included humanoids as certainly one of its high robotics developments for 2024. Microsoft co-founder Invoice Gates additionally lately shared 5 robotics startups that he’s enthusiastic about. Three of these are centered on humanoids, together with Agility, Apptronik, and RoMeLa from UCLA.
And though it hasn’t introduced any plans to commercialize its humanoid, Boston Dynamics lately launched a video displaying Atlas selecting and putting automotive struts. The importance of the demo is that Atlas performs the entire object recognition utilizing the robotic’s onboard sensors. Atlas acquires the automotive struts, utilizing its grippers from a vertical storage unit, and locations them horizontally onto a movement cart.