Announced in the middle of a flood One of the news at this week’s Delivering the Future event in Seattle was the news that Amazon will begin testing Agility’s Digit in a move that could bring the bipedal robot to its fulfillment centers across the country. These are small steps as these things go, and those early-stage deals don’t necessarily mean something bigger down the road.
Take, for example, Ford’s pilot of Agility, when the startup was exploring last-mile delivery as a possible way forward. Not long after, the company began focusing Digit production exclusively on warehouse and factory work.
In April of last year, Amazon named Agility as one of the first five recipients of the company’s $1 billion Industrial Innovation Fund. While being included in the fund doesn’t guarantee that Amazon will use its technology in the future, it’s a pretty clear indicator that the retail giant is, at the very least, interested in its potential.
“The Innovation Fund is really about exploring what’s possible out there,” Amazon Robotics chief technology officer Tye Brady told me in an interview this week. “It’s also about understanding practical, real-world examples.”
The executive adds that, although until now Amazon Robotics has been dedicated exclusively to wheeled locomotion, the legs present many possibilities.
“We’re interested in walking robots,” Brady says. “I find that very interesting, the ability to move in different terrain is interesting. We’re also interested in what works (and, frankly, what doesn’t work) about it. The humanoid shape is really interesting. I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing. We are experimentalists at heart. We will resolve it. “We are going to do a pilot and see how it works.”
The company’s focus on wheeled AMRs (autonomous mobile robots) dates back to the 2012 purchase of Kiva Systems, whose platforms have formed the basis of all of Amazon Robotics. There are currently 750,000 AMRs deployed in the company’s warehouse network. The company also launched non-AMR systems, including pickup arms like the Sparrow, which launched during the same event last year.
It’s hard to overstate the profound impact Amazon’s efforts have had on the rest of the industrial robotics space. On the one hand, the company has increased pressure for competitors to automate to meet rising customer expectations for same-day and next-day delivery. On the other hand, the decision to stop supporting Kiva customers outside of the Amazon ecosystem directly led to the founding of some of the biggest names in the industry, including Locus Robotics and 6 River Systems.
A system must demonstrate an increase in productivity for Amazon to integrate it into its growing robotics ecosystem. It is less about innovation for the sake of innovation and more about exploring any possible advantage that allows products to reach customers in less time. Including drones.
It remains to be seen how, precisely, humanoid robots specifically and bipedal robots in general might fit together. The other big hurdle is that any new system must match the almost unthinkable scale of the company.
There are several startups vying to own the humanoid robotics crown right now, including 1X, Figure, and Tesla. Agility’s Digit is the least human-looking of the bunch, but it has a lot of funding and a big head start. The company also recently opened a new factory in Salem, Oregon, which it says can produce up to 100,000 digits a year once it is fully online.
There’s no shortage of excitement around the category, but testing things at scale is another matter entirely. Digit’s success or failure in the tasks entrusted to it could have a profound impact on the trajectory of humanoid robots in general. Just as Kiva systems have proven to be a major catalyst for AMRs, if Amazon successfully deploys Digit at scale, suddenly everyone will want to get their hands on some humanoid workers.
The biggest talking point around the form factor is the fact that humans build workspaces for other humans. That includes the height of the shelves, the terrain, the width of the aisles and the staircase, the bane of ARM’s existence. From this point of view, a humanoid robot suddenly makes a lot more sense. The reality is that most companies operate on abandoned land. That is, their warehouses and factories are generally not built with specific automation solutions in mind. Humanoid robots fit very well in an abandoned site.
Of course, Amazon has the resources to build any facility it wants, so it stands to reason that many of its own robots are effectively working on entirely new sites. Those limitations are less of a concern for Amazon than much of the competition, but obviously, if an effective system can fit into existing workflow with minimal friction, that’s certainly ideal.
Image credits: Amazon
Brady confirms, however, that Digit is not the end of all Amazon’s plans for mobile manipulation.
“When you start putting (sensing, computing and actuation) together in interesting combinations, really unique things start to happen,” he says. “We are world leaders when it comes to mobile robots. And now we are largely dedicated to manipulating not only packages, but also objects. And bringing them together is exciting to see all the possibilities.”
That could mean alternative ways of entry. For example, Amazon knows how to build an AMR and a robotic arm. If one were to actually mount the latter on the former, he would have in his hands a kind of mobile manipulation.
“As seen with the Agility robot, it can be thought of as a mobile manipulator,” Brady says. “That is of interest to us. The mobility mode is of particular interest to us, because we have not worked much with bipedal robots. But we could certainly combine that with identification systems, handling systems, and classification systems. We will do everything we can to innovate for our customers and improve employee safety. “We’re getting there with the basic fundamentals.”
If for some reason Digit fails to stick the landing, that certainly doesn’t mean the end of all this or bipedal robots in general. Maybe you just don’t feel comfortable in existing Amazon workflows. Maybe the robot isn’t quite ready for Amazon’s scale or Amazon isn’t in a place where Digit makes sense.
Still, anyone remotely interested in bipedal robots would be wise to sit up and take note here. The drivers could well have a profound impact on the way we think about the series in the future.
