Agility Robotics plants its flag in Tesla's backyard
Agility is opening a new training center for its Digit robots in Fremont, California. Agility Robotics is opening a 60,000-square-foot facility to train its humanoid robots in Fremont, California, just up the highway from the factory where Tesla is expected to start manufacturing its Optimus robots this year. Tesla has increasingly bet on Optimus.
Key Takeaways
- Elon Musk recently said he expects it to be "the biggest product ever" once it's "useful outside of Tesla sometime next year.
" While Agility doesn't have Tesla's capital, it does have a robot, Digit, that is already useful in the real world.
- We now know what it takes to walk into these facilities and meet their safety bars, their regulatory bars, compliance, plug into their IT infrastructure, plug into their warehouse management system.
" Agility hasn't disclosed how many Digits that it has built or deployed, but outside observers estimate that dozens have worked in pilot or revenue-generating deployments.
- "When you think about self-driving cars, you know, as a non-humanoid example, you really don't want the anti-lock brake controller under AI control," Agility co-founder and chairman Damion Shelton told TechCrunch.
"The analog with humanoids is all the safety stuff needs to go through a path that's not generative AI, right?
- And generative AI answers that question definitively.
" The new facility is designed to accelerate the company's robotic deployments.
- Co-founder and chief robot officer Jonathan Hurst said there is plenty of work to keep Agility busy in manufacturing and logistics alone.
Stats & Key Facts
- #The company says it has secured $300 million in contract orders for its robots.
- #Johnson says more than 30 customers are in talks with the company about deploying Digit, and the new facility will be where the six-foot-tall robot learns new skills in environments similar to those it will experience in the field.
Elon Musk recently said he expects it to be "the biggest product ever" once it's "useful outside of Tesla sometime next year. " While Agility doesn't have Tesla's capital, it does have a robot, Digit, that is already useful in the real world. The robot is already generating revenue, carrying totes and bins in manufacturing and warehouse settings for customers like Amazon, GXO, Schaeffler, and Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada .
The company says it has secured $300 million in contract orders for its robots. "It's great to have [Tesla] in the same area as us, because really, for a long time Agility was out there alone, and it's good to have others in the humanoid space," CEO Peggy Johnson told TechCrunch. We now know what it takes to walk into these facilities and meet their safety bars, their regulatory bars, compliance, plug into their IT infrastructure, plug into their warehouse management system.
" Agility hasn't disclosed how many Digits that it has built or deployed, but outside observers estimate that dozens have worked in pilot or revenue-generating deployments. The company has said, for example, that Digits have moved 100,000 totes at a GXO logistics facility. Johnson is currently leading Agility through a reverse-merger that is expected to make it the first pure-play humanoid robot company on the public markets later this year.
For more details please read the original article at TechCrunch AI.
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