At today’s Delivering the Future event, Amazon announced that it will begin testing Agility’s Digit bipedal robot in its facilities. Amazon Robotics chief technologist Tye Brady said testing is in its “very, very early stages,” adding, “We need a lot to understand it better and see if it fits into our processes.”
Reading between the lines here, there is no guarantee that Amazon will actually begin implementing Digit in its warehouse facilities, which currently use more than 750,000 robotic systems.
The exploration is not a big surprise. Last April, the retail giant announced a $1 billion ‘Industrial Innovation’ fund. Agility was one of a seed round of five companies that received a portion of that investment. The list also includes Mantis Robotics, Modjoul and Vimaan.
Amazon has long insisted that its investment in these companies is not aimed at broader integrations with the technologies, but the company has often used these types of funds to explore partnerships and even acquisitions.
Agility is one of several startups building bipedal/humanoid robots for warehouse jobs. The theory posits that humans build workplaces around us, so why build robots that can operate in those spaces? However, Agility here is far ahead of the competition in terms of development and production.
In September, the company announced that it is seriously ramping up production with the addition of Robohub, a factory located in Salem, Oregon, which it says will be capable of producing more than 10,000 robots a year when fully operational.
