Subscribe
The AI Race:
Musk Sues OpenAIStartups to WatchAI WarfareGemini BacklashAI Unlocks Ancient SecretsHow AI Chatbots Work
Businessweek
Technology
Humanoid Robots at Amazon Provide Glimpse of an Automated Workplace
Agility Robotics has targeted the warehousing industry with two-legged bots and sees them eventually stocking shelves and working in hospitals.
0:27
Amazon Begins Using Humanoid Robot in Warehouse
Unmute
Amazon Begins Using Humanoid Robot in Warehouse
By
Matt Day
March 4, 2024 at 8:30 PM GMT+8
Save
Employees at an
Amazon.com Inc. warehouse near Seattle recently got a glimpse of the future of work: a 5-foot-9-inch robot that resembles a human, walks like a bird and has glowing white eyes. Called Digit, the machine is configured for one basic task: plucking empty yellow bins off a shelf and ferrying them several feet to a conveyor. Then doing it again. Over and over and over.
The robot, in the testing phase, probably won’t transform the logistics industry anytime soon. But it’s a major technological leap forward, and it positions its maker,
Agility Robotics Inc., at the vanguard of an effort to build machines that can toil alongside human workers. Where some robotics startups wax futuristic, imagining their machines ushering in an age of abundance or helping colonize planets, Tangent, Oregon-based Agility is resolutely down-to-earth. It aims to build 10,000 robots a year and deploy them to warehouses and storerooms all over the world.