Maybe a few Years from now, the halls of the Georgia World Congress Center will be filled with humanoid robots during MODEX Week. However, in 2024, Digit will stand alone at the supply chain show. It's a testament to Agility's healthy edge over competitors like Figure, Tesla, 1X and Apptronik. This time last year at Modex (Chicago's version of the conference), Digit had something of an industrial automation party. A row of bipedal robots moved handbags to a nearby conveyor belt at specific times throughout the week.
This Week in Atlanta, an eight-figure crew works every day from the show's opening to its closing. But this time, the blue and silver robots are doing something a little different. Demonstrations show the process of line-side replenishment and bag retrieval using a flow rack designed for automotive manufacturing. Agility told TechCrunch that it is currently working with automotive customers — though it hasn't released any names yet.
Ford was famously among the early backers of Agility, announcing a partnership at CES 2020. Ultimately, Digit's operating plans for last-mile delivery fell through, as the company instead focused on the near-term issue of warehouse staffing. This has proven to be a smart move, as employment numbers have not yet recovered post-Covid-19. Damion Shelton, former CEO of Agility, told me last week that the last mile is still on the table, but there is more than enough to focus on in the warehouse and manufacturing sectors to keep the company busy.
Assembling the C-suite has been an important part of the company's growth over the past 12 months. Co-founders Shelton and Jonathan Hirst have changed roles, from CEO and CTO to President and CEO of Robotics, respectively. A week ago today, Peggy Johnson, former CEO of Magic Leap, took over as CEO from Shelton. Last year, the company hired Fetch founder and CEO Melonie Wise as CTO and brought on former Apple and Ford executive Aindrea Campbell as COO.
Changes in leadership indicate that the company is taking marketing seriously. It also puts Agility in a rare position among the top robotics companies, with five of its nine executive roles held by women.
Agility is ramping up production volumes, with plans to reach “high double-digit” production of its bipedal robot by the end of the year. This week at Modex, the company unveiled Agility Arc, Digit's fleet management and deployment software.
“The automation platform has all the things you would expect from a fleet management system, in terms of battery, charge management, workflow management and robot tasks,” Wise tells TechCrunch. “But it also contains the other aspects you need to deploy the system, configure it, and monitor and support the system remotely. It's a single pane of glass that lets you do everything that goes into managing a fleet of numbers.”
Johnson, who previously oversaw Magic Leap's fragile shift toward enterprise, says the new enterprise program has given her confidence that her new company has a stronger footing than her last company.
“The thing that was really encouraging when I learned about the new cloud automation system is that it is a sign that the company is maturing,” she says. “This isn't just a device, it's something designed to integrate. Often into [Johnson’s former employer] Microsoft, this will be the stumbling point. You would have an isolated system here that wasn't integrated with everything else and didn't provide the value that it could. So, the fact that it's going to be able to integrate with WMS systems and other things that the company already uses is a huge burden for it.
Image credits: Brian Heater
For Johnson, Modix was a tremendous learning experience. She spoke to us last week from Japan, where she recently ran the Tokyo Marathon. I hopped on a plane back to the US over the weekend specifically to get a first-hand look at the supply chain/logistics world I'm now a part of. “I wanted to make sure I was here to not only see the customers, but also the environment the machines work in. I'm going to spend a lot of time walking around today and immersing myself in that.”
Johnson's core pitch as CEO is a fast path to ROI. This is possible in large part due to the fact that Digit is available through a RaaS (Robotics as a Service) model, which has become an increasingly popular way to convince companies to take the leap. Customers can now try these systems without having to worry about huge upfront costs.
These customers are the ones who ultimately shape the future of Digit. The model on the floor that shows the car's operation contains a new pair of end effects. Instead of the fin-shaped appendages the company displays, this figure has four digits of its own on each hand, with two pairs of hooked fingers pointing in opposite directions. However, this is not clever mobile phone manipulation. Instead, it's designed to do the thing Digit has been doing all along: moving bags.
However, the handbags here are very wide (as is usual in the line of cars), which prevents the robot from cradling them with its arm from each side. Instead, responders hold the front of handbags. This method also provides a firmer grip on the box which often has heavy, unrestrained items rolling around inside.
In the not-so-distant future, Wise envisions a version of Digit that can switch its ultimate effects as needed.
“When you look at the end effector specifically, there is about 60 years of prior technology,” she says. “all [Modex]If you look around, you'll find that all of these robot arms have different end effects. This is something that is well understood. There is something called “end-of-arm tools”. It's interchangeable. What we're going to move toward as a product is having interchangeable tools at the end of the arm and eventually making it an automated process.
With what might be considered a dig at some humanoid robotics competitions, Shelton notes, “but interestingly, 0% of the solutions are five fingers, 27 degrees of freedom in the hands.” “There have been some of our competitors who have gone on record saying they use the five-fingered hand primarily as a branding exercise,” he adds.
In terms of what the competition should focus on, Wise believes Agility's peers should focus on safety – a major concern when introducing new technologies into the warehouse environment. “Collectively, as an industry, we need to get our safety story straight,” she says. “We as an industry need to come together and decide what the safety standards are.”
Johnson adds that companies need to focus on the task at hand. “Stay focused on the here and now and what can be done,” she says. “Everyone needs a road map, but stay focused and prove it.”
