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01 Agility Robotics will be the world's first large-scale humanoid robot factory
Agility Robotics, an American startup, recently announced that its 6,500-square-meter humanoid robot factory "RoboFab" in Salem, Oregon, has nearly completed and is expected to start production this year.
Damion Shelton, co-founder and CEO of Agility Robotics, said that the completion of RoboFab marks a key moment in the history of robotics - the mass production era of commercial humanoid robots has arrived, and said that when humanoid robots achieve scale, Will have a real, extensive and far-reaching impact on human society.
02 is specially manufactured for humanoid robots, with an annual output of 10,000 units
According to Agility Robotics, RoboFab will be dedicated to the production of Digit humanoid robots, with an annual production capacity of hundreds of Digit robots, and is expected to produce more than 10,000 humanoid robots per year in the future, and will employ 500 employees to work with Digit. Realize true "man-machine collaboration". The first products from the plant will be delivered to partners in early 2024, followed by mass production and global sales in 2025.
03 Digit Flexible "Movers"
The robot product RoboFab plans to mass produce is called Digit, which is a humanoid robot that integrates both arms and legs, has high flexibility and maneuverability, and takes into account both mobility and maneuverability. Agility Robotics hopes to build Digit into a standardized, modular commercial product and solution through mass production.
Why choose to develop humanoid robots? This is closely related to Digit's need to adapt to the human work environment. The founder of Agility Robotics said that humanoid robots are easier to adapt and integrate into the current human-centered work scene and process system.
Digit is similar in size and shape to a human. It can stand autonomously, bend its knee joints backward, improve its stability, maintain its balance, and walk flexibly between warehouse aisles and shelves. And it has feet and arms, designed as a clamp-like hand palm is more suitable for grasping all kinds of items, can climb stairs like a person, bend over, carry out all kinds of items handling, loading and unloading operations, and can adapt to complex and changeable environment, in small Spaces or uneven terrain and other scenes can also run freely.
If the traditional robot design such as wheel type is used, the adaptability and flexibility of the robot will be greatly reduced.
Digit is targeting the warehousing and logistics market, which is designed to address the current workforce issues such as injuries, fatigue, high turnover, and rising labor costs. Let robots replace people to carry out repetitive work such as handling, loading and unloading, sorting, and cooperate with people to complete more advanced operations, which can greatly improve the production efficiency of enterprises and reduce production costs.
According to Agility Robotics, the first batch of Digit will be immediately put into the internal logistics work of the RoboFab factory after the official production, which can verify product quality and realize closed-loop production, and also embody the design concept of "robot colleague" advocated by Agility Robotics. That is, robots work side by side with humans, rather than completely replacing humans.
04 2023 or the first year of humanoid robots
This year, the concept of human robot stocks continue to be hot, more and more technology giants layout in this field, and with the ChatGPT and other large language models for the autonomous learning ability of robots to bring major breakthroughs, so that robots can achieve more efficient interaction and collaboration, humanoid robots have become the capital of the "hot cake".
Agility Robotics is not the first company in the field of humanoid robots to publicly express its ambitions to build factories and mass produce them. Musk, who pushed the humanoid robot to the forefront, as early as last year's AI DAY, a high-profile display of humanoid robots, and said that Tesla "most of the long-term value" will eventually come from Optimus, and that everyone will have a humanoid robot in the future, and the humanoid robot market will be worth more than 10 billion dollars.
Optimus shares many similarities with Digit in that both have a humanoid design and aim to move and operate freely like a human. It is expected to be put into official use by the end of 2023, 2024Q1 to achieve mass production of Optimus, is still in the prototype test stage, has not realized the real application landing, Musk's vision of "robot into the factory" may really be achieved by Agility Robotics.
However, humanoid robots face many challenges before entering the public life. At present, humanoid robots involve core technologies such as autonomous learning and environmental perception, and these technologies still need to be continuously optimized and iterated in order to cope with today's complex and changeable actual environment.
The cost of humanoid robots remains an uncrossed mountain. Although Digit has landed in practical application and made a preliminary commercialization attempt, the price of up to $250,000 still makes most people "prohibitive", resulting in humanoid robot companies are not in a state of "making ends meet". If enterprises want to achieve large-scale commercial deployment, enterprises must continue to innovate technology, reduce costs, improve production capacity, and form a virtuous circle through scale effects.
If RoboFab can land smoothly, it will undoubtedly push the humanoid robot industry forward a big step, and will the future humanoid robot industry pattern change as a result? We'll wait and see.