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The humanoid race is continuous to warmth up. Agility Robotics kicked off the week by naming Peggy Johnson its chief govt officer. Johnson is a veteran expertise chief who most just 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 staff. Johnson will information Agility’s subsequent section of progress because it expands industrial deployments, broadens its product portfolio, and prepares to fabricate Digit at scale.

Earlier than Magic Leap, Johnson spent six years as govt vice chairman of enterprise improvement at Microsoft. She reported on to CEO Satya Nadella and was chargeable for driving strategic partnerships and transactions to speed up progress for the corporate and its prospects. Johnson launched M12, Microsoft’s first company enterprise fund that in three years had added greater than 80 corporations 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 proper chief to take Agility by the transition from cutting-edge expertise startup to main world robotics firm. I couldn’t be extra excited to have her be a part of us,” stated Shelton. “I additionally wish to acknowledge the unbelievable work of our workers and our management staff in driving Agility’s success so far. With Peggy on the helm, Agility can carry 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 govt committee and held numerous management positions throughout engineering, gross sales, advertising, and enterprise improvement. She was chargeable for main the Web Companies division, which launched a cell 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 staff on the planet,” stated 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 staff 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 are as useful to staff as they’re useful to backside strains. That is Agility’s time.”

Digit is the world’s solely bipedal robotic presently delivering productive work for purchasers. It’s also the one deployment-ready bipedal robotic that’s engineered to adjust to OSHA’s stringent security requirements and demonstrated to run massive 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 Might 2023, the corporate named Melonee Sensible CTO. Sensible bought autonomous cell robotic maker (AMR) Fetch Robotics to Zebra Applied sciences in 2021 for $290 million.

Digit humanoid leads manner

The Digit humanoid stands 5 ft. 9 in. (1.75 m) tall and might carry payloads as much as 35 lb. (16 kg). Digit has been in improvement 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 activity is to assist with tote recycling.

GXO Logistics, the world’s largest pure-play contract logistics supplier, is additionally testing Digit. It’s also 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 look like Chucks from 6 River Techniques, carry 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 potential to scale to greater than 10,000 robots per yr at this location. Agility stated Digit is engineered to satisfy the protection 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 Might 1 and a couple 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 industrial robots.

Humanoid race heating up

Almost a dozen corporations worldwide launched humanoid prototypes in 2023. That features Determine AI, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based firm that final week raised $675 million in Sequence B funding.

Ash Sharma, managing director at Work together Evaluation, has stated warehousing affords humanoids the proper mixture of repetitiveness and menial work, coupled with an absence of standardization and an absence of uniformity of issues dealt with. For corporations working achievement facilities with a large product combine or fluctuating demand, the pliability of humanoid robots might ship an answer to the continuing labor and expertise disaster within the logistics trade.

He added that Work together Evaluation’ analysis suggests the pliability and scalability humanoid robots supply may very well be a attainable reply to ongoing labor and expertise shortages. Nonetheless, it doesn’t come with out problems, and it’s but to be seen whether or not these can be simply overcome to see their fast deployment in warehouses.

The Worldwide Federation of Robotics (IFR) included humanoids as one in all its prime robotics developments for 2024. Microsoft co-founder Invoice Gates additionally just 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 just lately launched a video exhibiting Atlas selecting and inserting 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 move cart.