At $30 An Hour, Humanoid Robots Begin To Work With AMRs in The Warehouse

As humanoid robots begin to enter the commercial market, there are many questions about them. While the "wheels or legs" debate is a hot topic, questions about the business model (cost, ROI, etc.) are also top of mind. 

Collaborating with AMR for $30 an hour

On June 27 of this year, Agility Robotics signed a multi-year agreement with GXO Logistics Inc. the world's largest pure contract logistics provider, to deploy Digit humanoid robots into a variety of logistics operations.

A "small" fleet of Digit robots has been deployed at the Spanx plant in Flowery Branch, Georgia, where Digit picks up tote bags from six River Systems AMRs and places them on a conveyor. Digit can pick up empty or filled totes of women's shapewear products. It can also pick up bags from the bottom or top shelf of the AMR.

All of this is coordinated through Agility Arc, the company's cloud-based automation platform for deploying and managing Digit's robots. The robots are deployed using a Robots as a Service (RaaS) model, which means Agility Robotics is starting to earn a small amount of revenue for Digit. This is an important milestone for a humanoid robotics company.

Peggy Johnson reveals that Agility Robotics is currently charging "the full $30 per hour" for its Digit humanoid robots. She said the customer's return on investment (ROI) was less than two years.

The hourly cost figure for the robot, all accessories and maintenance seems reasonable. Now, it's unlikely that Digit will be working 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, but for the sake of argument, let's assume it is. That works out to $125,000 per robot for two years. Of course, these figures would be different for a normal eight-hour shift.

Agility Robotics says Digit's battery life is currently up to eight hours, depending on usage. This was another important point Johnson discussed on stage. She explained that the company's Digit has a 2-to-1 battery life, which means customers get two units of runtime while the other is charging.

Johnson added that the next-generation Digit will be released this fall. Its lifting capacity will increase from 35 pounds to 50 pounds (15.8 kg to 22.6 kg), battery life will improve, and more Digit units will be available, she said. the 2-to-1 ratio will gradually increase to 4-to-1, and possibly even 10-to-1, to improve customers' ROI.

As the cost of components such as batteries drops and hardware deployments expand, the return on investment should be quicker and easier to obtain.

Amazon has also tested Digit and invested in Agility Robotics, though details of the partnership and Amazon's testing of Digit were unclear at press time.

Exploring more ways to collaborate with humans and machines

Johnson, who was named CEO of Agility Robotics in March 2024, also spoke briefly about working near humans. There are currently no safety standards for humanoid robots, although steps are being taken to rectify this.

At the Spanx facility, Digit does not currently work near humans. The robot stands 5 feet 9 inches (5.7 meters) tall and weighs 140 pounds (63.5 kilograms).

But Johnson says Digit "is on the road to what he calls functional safety" and is expected to be "interoperable in the vicinity of humans" in the next 18 months or so. If successful, this would be another important milestone for humanoid robots, whose numbers are growing today.

Finally, Johnson also said that Agility Robotics is currently raising Series C funding. She said, "This will allow us to reach our goal of 10,000 units in the next few years." The company expects its new RoboFab facility in Oregon to have a production capacity of more than 10,000 Digit units per year.

Humanoid robots on the ground at an accelerated pace

Currently, humanoid robots are at a critical point in their journey from the lab to industrialization, and finding the right application scenarios has become the focus of all humanoid robot manufacturers. Manufacturing and warehousing logistics industry is becoming the first humanoid robot landing application of the main scene. Since the beginning of this year, a number of manufacturing companies have introduced humanoid robots in factories and logistics warehouses, and started testing applications.

The humanoid robot Walker S has been "practicing" in the Hefei Azalea Automobile factory; in May this year, Dongfeng Liuzhou Automobile signed a strategic cooperation agreement on the application of humanoid robots in automobile manufacturing with Ubiquiti.

Tesla

Tesla's newly developed humanoid robot Optimus has been tested at the Tesla factory.

Agility Robotics

Signed a multi-year agreement with GXO Logistics to deploy Digit humanoid robots into various logistics operations; testing at Amazon factories.

Boston Dynamics

Boston Dynamics Atlas has successfully learned to lift medium-weight automotive parts, with a subsequent test application at a Hyundai plant.

Sanctuary AI

New strategic partnership with automotive manufacturer and assembler Magna International to supply humanoid robots.

Apptronik

Reached a major agreement with Mercedes-Benz in March of this year, which will see Mercedes-Benz introduce Apollo robots to its plants to test humanoid robots in automotive environments.

In early 2024, Figure announced a major agreement with automotive giant BMW to formally introduce its humanoid robots to BMW's automotive manufacturing plants.

"Robots will outnumber humans on the planet, and everyone will have a robot." Musk, the founder of Tesla, has described such a dream.
In Musk's vision, the future demand for humanoid robots will far exceed that of electric cars, and he even predicted that the number of mass-produced units will probably exceed 10 billion once the product matures. So how far are we from the realization of this beautiful vision?

Now it seems there is still a long way to go. Right now, one of the biggest obstacles to the commercialization of humanoid robots on the ground is its high cost.

Such a high cost, so that many end-use manufacturers deterred, delayed to enter the game, but also caused the development of humanoid robotics technology for many years, but always on the eve of industrialization of the situation. Before 2023, most humanoid robot products are used as research platforms or performance props, and have never been able to truly large-scale landing. But with the big technology companies scrambling to increase their investment, startups continue to emerge, the dawn of the humanoid robotics industry is beginning to show.

In the tireless efforts of enterprises and research institutions, the manufacturing cost of humanoid robots began to dip, no longer readily available millions of dollars, which also brings more possibilities for the commercialization of humanoid robots.

Some domestic companies are already looking to further reduce the price of humanoid robots. Kepler Robotics plans to keep it at $20,000-$30,000, while Zhiyuan Robotics expects its first humanoid robot to cost less than 200,000 yuan to build in the future. Of course, this is not the final selling price range, but rather a small goal that robotics players have set for themselves.

In the face of the future, although the road is still full of challenges, but the current humanoid robotics field of many new products, new attempts, new directions also let us see a brighter future. From the pilot application to the scale of landing, we also look forward to seeing humanoid robots in a more rapid application of various industries.