Agility Robotics’ humanoid robotic has its first actual job—at a Spanx manufacturing unit

“Knees get in the way in which of selecting issues up,” she defined to Fortune tech reporter Jason Del Rey, declaring that Digit was designed to work in huge warehouses, lifting issues up and placing issues down. 

Now, Digit is placing its backward-knees design, ten years within the making, to good use: The droid lately received employed at its first actual job—selecting up totes at a Spanx facility in Connecticut and placing them onto conveyors. The work is a part of a multi-year take care of logistics supplier GXO Logistics, and Johnson stated the corporate is already getting month-to-month income from the robot-as-a-service challenge. 

Johnson, who has solely been within the CEO position for 4 months, stated that there are about 1.1 million unfilled warehouse jobs within the US that require the repetitive, mundane duties Digit is doing. “No one desires these jobs,” she stated, including that Digit can elevate as much as 50 kilos—and repetitively lifting that weight results in staff getting harm, and finally quitting their warehouse jobs.  “That’s the place the accidents are available. That’s the place the turnover is available in,” she stated. Warehouse staff that used to do bodily work are actually changing into the managers of the robots, she added: “They have to be upskilled.” 

Agility Robotics, which spun out of analysis at Oregon State College, raised $150 million in a Collection C spherical in April 2024 as the corporate ready to deploy Digit in logistics and warehouse environments. Now that Digit has been launched into the wild of the warehouse, Johnson stated the corporate is engaged on a rollout for its subsequent era of Digit to come back within the fall. Because of a manufacturing unit the corporate lately inbuilt Salem, Oregon, the corporate will roll out a whole bunch of Digit robots, and hundreds are deliberate for the next 12 months—with a watch in direction of a purpose of 10,000 to satisfy rising demand. 

However it’s not nearly getting the robots to stroll—backward knees and all, Johnson emphasised. As an alternative, it’s concerning the robotic with the ability to step into an operation’s present workflow. “We have to enter a company IT infrastructure and make it work for them,” she stated.  

In April 2024, Agility Robotics confirmed that it laid off a “small quantity” of staff due to “ongoing efforts to construction the corporate for achievement”  whereas ramping up manufacturing of Digit. Johnson stated that the corporate is at present elevating capital for one more spherical of funding down the road. 

However in the meanwhile, she stated, she is attempting to determine one of the best office for the handful of Digit robots at present out there. “We have now a whole lot of curiosity from automotive, retail grocers,” she stated. “I’m attempting to determine which path to go in.”