Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Headless Digit robot can carry boxes up the stairs, work alongside humans

The American company Agility Robotics built a bipedal humanoid robot called Digit – engineered to perform manual labor, such as removing boxes from shelves and loading them onto a truck. The company has received an investment of $20 million, and the company is ready to go into full commercial production.

With two legs and two arms, Digit’s overall shape is very familiar, but the lack of a head and its backward bending knees give the illusion away pretty quickly. Digit’s legs have knees that bend backward, which allows the robot to climb stairs and sidewalks while carrying heavy loads in its two robotic arms.

The idea seems to be that it could work side by side with people in, for example, a warehouse or be used as a goods agent who delivers packages. The robot can carry out labor-intensive duties, including loading and unloading hefty cargo or performing an inspection of potentially hazardous workplaces. But unlike wage workers, this servant robot can be packed into a rolling suitcase for easy delivery.

And best of all, Digit is also more energy-efficient than other similar robots. You can trust that it will work for a long time with efficient operation and a useful battery life.

Digit builds on two decades of research and development from the team on human-like dynamic mobility and manipulation and can handle unstructured indoor and outdoor terrain, going where people go. Digit is versatile and can do a range of different jobs that have been designed around a human form factor.

The headless servant robot is commercially available and has been shipping to customers since July 2020, but there is no information about the exact price. However, according to some reports, Agility Robotics is selling the robot for a whopping $250,000.