The addition of a head and some digits of the robot's very own will continue to evolve and improve according to the co-founders.
Don't expect Digit to have digits that look like humans.
It was supposed to be a life in last-mile delivery. The startup that spun out of Oregon State University is now focused on Logistics. To turn Digit into a platform for general purpose work such as unpacking trucks and moving boxes.
During an interview and demo of Digit on Thursday, Shelton said that the company's vision was to allow physical work to be turned into a software application.
Agility is constantly making improvements on the software side and adding hardware where it makes sense.
Home runs are the applications we are doing at the moment. During the demonstration, Digit picked up a tote and carried it to a conveyor belt. It is what makes the company when we do these things reliably and at human rate. We have a lot of solutions here.
Future improvements could include Digit being able to go to its charging dock to power up or complete other tasks. He said it won't be like a human.
They will be specific for the use cases that we want to achieve. There will be a head on the robot. Along with the theme of everything we've done, where it's kind of physics first and function first, that tells people what the robot is going to do. It's also about putting things up there The robot is evolving and being refined for its function.
A head with a pair of digital eyes will help people understand where it is going. There is a speaker in the robot, but it won't talk.
"I don't think that it's time to talk to the robot yet" They don't always do what you want when you speak to them. I would like to make sure that we manage the expectations so that people treat this like a partner and not a peer.
The startup raised $150 million in a round led by Playground Global and DCVC and included the Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund. Shelton stated that the company has doubled in size since January to more than 130 employees and is investing in other areas such as vertically integrating its own manufacturing process, enabling cloud fleet management, working with its customers' systems and integrating with the warehouse management systems in partner locations.
Shelton says that Agility is not giving up on delivery despite its focus on warehouses.
Shelton said that last-mile delivery is the home of robots because it is a task where legs are a very unique offering compared to other solutions. One of the few technologies that can navigate 100% of human environments is it. Even if you imagine a world 50 years in the future where all warehouses are new greenfield construction that are fully automated from the scratch, there is still a need for robots to move through the outdoors.
It is easier to focus on indoor tasks from a deployment perspective.
Shelton said that the market can keep them busy for a long time.
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