Digit, the flagship robot at Oregon-based Agility Robotics, raised its hand to wave at the audience at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech in Park City, Utah, as CEO Peggy Johnson explained to the crowd why the robot’s knees were, well, backward—like bird legs. “Knees get in the way of picking things up,” she explained to Fortune tech reporter Jason Del Rey, pointing out that Digit was designed to work in big warehouses, lifting things up and putting things down. Now, Digit is putting its backward-knees design, ten years in the making, to good use: The droid recently got hired at its first real job—picking up totes at a Spanx facility in Georgia and putting them onto conveyors. The work is part of a multi-year deal with logistics provider GXO Logistics, and Johnson said the company is already getting monthly revenue from the robot-as-a-service project. Johnson, who has only been in the CEO role for four months, said that there are about 1.1 million unfilled warehouse jobs in the US that require the repetitive, mundane tasks Digit is doing. “Nobody wants these jobs,” she said, adding that repetitively lifting heavy weights leads to workers getting hurt, and ultimately quitting their warehouse jobs. “That’s where the injuries come in. That’s where the turnover comes in,” she said. Warehouse employees that used to do physical work are now becoming the managers of the robots, she added: “They need to be upskilled.”
Full report : Agility Robotics’ humanoid Digit robot is working hard at its first real job—at a Spanx factory
