.jpg)
Oregon company Agility Robotics has completed the construction of the world’s first factory for human-centric, multi-purpose robots or humanoids.
The first humanoid robot factory.
RoboFab is the first full-scale humanoid robot factory in the world. It’s the home base for producing our robot Digit and the athat go with it. Located in Salem, Oregon, RoboFab is a shining example of American manufacturing excellence.
The New RoboFab Factory
Last year, Agility began construction of a 70,000-square-foot facility that will open this year. Now, the factory has officially begun assembling robots and robotic fleets. About 30 miles from Agility’s engineering center, the facility has the capacity to produce hundreds of robots within the first year.
More than 500 workers will be able to work the factory at full capacity, in addition to Agility’s other previously built locations. Agility’s new RoboFab facility will be able to produce over 10,000 robots annually.
Agility Robotics’ Digit
Agility Robotics began as an Oregon State University spin-out in 2015. The lab’s immediate push was to create a basis for locomotion and stability in bipedal robots. In 2017, the company unveiled a full-size robot known as Digit. About six years later, in 2023, the current model of the Digit was made available.
Designed from the ground up, Digit operates the same way people do, following assignments to do tasks such as bulk material handling. Digit provides a robotic utility to take the place of humans, taking care of assigned tasks both safely and efficiently.
Once the facility moves to full capacity, Digit will be of additional value, working in the same factory as its production. The bot will be able to load and unload totes moving alongside humans, replicating simple human-centric tasks.
The Agility Robot Manufacturing System
RoboFab is a CapEx light assembly facility. That means no heavy machinery or costly industrial equipment is used to produce the Digits that come off the assembly line. The facility itself, as well as the Agility Robot Manufacturing System (ARMS), is highly scalable to meet the immense commercial demand for Digit.
At peak capacity, RoboFab can produce 10,000 robots per year. However, we will ramp up to eight units per shift in the first year, which will allow us to refine the system while we avoid wasting time and resources. More importantly, we will produce a large number of robots right out of the gate.
The assembly line is divided into work cells for the major sub-assemblies, including legs, arms, torsos, and actuators. It is designed to produce each sub-assembly in roughly the same amount of time. Our unique system is tuned for an entire robot to come together simultaneously and then move on to final testing.
Each work cell can quickly expand or be duplicated to increase production capacity. It's a structure that allows for high-rate manufacturing and producing robots in large quantities without requiring expensive modifications to the process or shutting down the assembly line to make adjustments.
With ARMS, we have a blueprint for quickly and cost-effectively building more RoboFabs as needed.
Are these tasks being done in your facility?
If so, it's time to bring Digit in to help expand your labor pool.
Tote Load & Unload:
Digit is a revolutionary piece of automation technology, the ultimate connector of existing technology and infrastructure. Digit can load and unload totes to support many different workflows.
For example, we've successfully integrated with many of the world's biggest AMR vendors, and the list is growing.
Using a mobile manipulator like Digit minimizes downtime and maximizes throughput, enhancing overall productivity. Load and unload totes from just about any source or destination: AMRs, Racks & Shelves, Units Sorters, Goods 2 Person Systems, Conveyors
Tote Recycling:
By efficiently managing the recycling of totes used for material transportation within logistics and manufacturing workflows, companies can optimize resources and re-task employees where they make the most impact.
This process minimizes downtime and enhances efficiency by ensuring totes are readily available, and at the right locations.
Tote Stacking, Tote Destacking, Tote Nesting
Tote Palletizing & Depalletizing:
By efficiently managing the recycling of totes used for material transportation within logistics and manufacturing workflows, companies can optimize resources and re-task employees where they make the most impact.
This process minimizes downtime and enhances efficiency by ensuring totes are readily available, and at the right locations.
Palletize and Depalletize from/to: Conveyors, Racks, Carts, AMRs
Agility Robotics is well into construction of a 70,000-sq-ft (6,503-sq-m) facility in Salem, Oregon, with the capacity to produce more than 10,000 units per year of the company's Digit humanoid robot – which will work alongside humans on the factory floor.
The new "RoboFab" manufacturing plant is set to open later this year, with customer deliveries expected to begin in 2024, and "general market availability" to commence in 2025. Agility expects to build "hundreds" of Digit humanoids in its first year, and scale up from there.
In the video below, Agility COO Aindrea Campbell compares the RoboFab factory to Henry Ford's first manufacturing operation.
"World's first humanoid robot factory" will ship Digits in 2024
"There was a point in time over a hundred years ago," she says, "when we had the world's first automobile factory. I think this is the same moment where we're now having the world's first humanoid robot factory, and someday, just like automobiles, humanoid robots will be all around the globe."
So what is Digit? Well, it's a 175-cm-tall (5-ft 9-in) tall bipedal robot weighing around 65 kg (141 lb). It can carry loads up to 16 kg (35 lb) in a pair of claw-like gripper hands, and it charges itself autonomously to theoretically stay on duty for 16 hours out of 24 – the equivalent of covering two full-time shifts.
It runs a similar set of bird-like backwards-looking legs to the company's Cassie robot, which broke the Guinness World Record for the fastest 100-meter sprint by a bipedal robot in 2022. Both have short upper legs that typically stay oriented forward in a knees-up stance, then long "calves" extending back behind the torso, and a high ankle joint where you'd normally expect to see a knee, leading down to smallish toe pads in contact with the ground.
The advantages here are that Digit can fold its legs up behind it in a way that would cause loud noises from the average human. It can also squat down in front of shelves to grab boxes without its knees protruding forward, so it can pick them up with less of a need to lean forward.
Equipped with camera vision and LiDAR, Digit has been around for several years now – you may remember it being proposed as a parcel-delivering robot by Ford back in 2019 – which would be remarkable. Who remembers things from 2019?
It can be controlled via a gamepad-style tablet (and e-stop shutdown initiator) and hard-coded with various tasks – mainly in the 'picking things up and putting them down' category. Interestingly though, in the last few months, Agility has been experimenting with using large language model (LLM) AIs, effectively to get Digit to program itself in response to natural language verbal commands.
Digit will start out moving boxes and totes around Agility's own factory, and those of its early customers. Next, the company hopes to get it loading and unloading trucks. There's little mention of more complex tasks at this point, so it seems Agility is happy to keep early use cases very constrained.
As to whether RoboFab is technically the world's first humanoid robot factory, well, that may be gilding the lily, since Chinese company Fourier Intelligence announced in July that it would have 100 of its GT-1 humanoids built and in the hands of customers by the end of this year – each with the capability to carry nearly its own weight.
Either way, it adds to a growing pile of evidence that the workforce is about to see yet another substantial change. There are now dozens of companies who have decided, and convinced investors, that the dawn of humanoid robot workers is very nearly upon us. Brace for change.
Also:
Amazon says its new warehouse robot can work 20-hour shifts and 'feel' items
Amazon's latest Vulcan robot is the company's first system that can sense touch. The devices can reach places where workers would ordinarily have to bend or climb a step-ladder. Amazon says fulfillment centers will still need human workers, especially for higher-tech roles.
Amazon warehouse workers' newest high-tech colleague has a sensitive side.
The e-commerce giant's latest robot, named Vulcan, is its first system that can sense touch, enabling it to handle a wider selection of oddly shaped items than older models.
"In the past, when industrial robots have unexpected contact, they either emergency stop or smash through that contact," Amazon director of applied science Aaron Parness said in a statement.
Vulcan's arm uses force-feedback sensors that allow the robot to detect how much pressure it can apply without damaging an object, and Amazon says the tech enables the robot to pick and stow three quarters of the kinds of products that are kept at a typical fulfillment center.
The tech is currently in use at centers in Spokane, Washington, and Hamburg, Germany. Amazon plans to deploy more units across the US and Europe aver the next few years.
Apart from its ability to work 20-hour shifts, Amazon also says the Vulcan robot complements human workers by helping reach items from high bins without a step-ladder, and low bins that would require crouching.
That frees up workers to focus their efforts on objects stored in mid-height bins, which the company calls their "power zone."
Vulcan works alongside our employees, and the combination is better than either on their own," Parness said.
Parness also told CNBC that Amazon fulfillment centers will still need human workers, especially for higher-tech roles that involve installing and maintaining the expanding robot fleet.
"I don't believe in 100% automation," he told the outlet. "If we had to get Vulcan to do 100% of the stows and picks, it would never happen. You would wait your entire life. Amazon understands this."