A factory planning to pump out 10,000 two-legged robots a year is taking shape in Salem, Oregon — the better to help Amazon and other giant companies with dangerous hauling, lifting and moving.
Why it matters: Agility Robotics says that its RoboFab manufacturing facility will be the first to mass-produce humanoid robots, which could be nimbler and more versatile than their existing industrial counterparts.
- China seems to think so: Beijing recently announced a goal of mass-producing humanoid robots by 2025.
Driving the news: Agility Robotics, which makes a bot named Digit that’s being tested by Amazon, plans to open RoboFab early next year, inaugurating what CEO Damion Shelton calls “the world’s first purpose-built humanoid robot factory.”
- “We’ve placed a very high priority on just getting robots out there as fast as possible,” Shelton, who’s also a co-founder, tells Axios.
- “Our big plan is that we want to get to general-purpose humanoids as soon as we can.”
- There’s a growing backlog of orders for Digit, which the company says is the first commercially available human-shaped robot designed for warehouse work.
Where it stands: Agility has produced about 100 robots since its founding in 2016, and plans to move Digit production from its Tangent, Oregon headquarters to the more spacious 70,000-square-foot RoboFab facility in the coming months.
Hellbound and Down 