Ford Motor Company has acquired the first two robots off the production line at Agility Robotics, the producer of Digit, a commercially available robot with arms and legs designed to work with humans and in human spaces.

This purchase continues the existing research partnership between Agility and the US car maker to explore ways to help commercial vehicle customers, including autonomous vehicle businesses, make warehousing and delivery more efficient and affordable for their customers.

Key applications could be for Digit to be used for indoor or first-mile logistics and last-50-feet delivery. 

The research also focuses on how Ford’s commercial vehicles and Digit can ‘talk’ to each other and their surroundings through advanced connectivity technologies. 

For example, Ford’s connected vehicles can continually update cloud-based maps that can be shared with Digit so it doesn’t have to recreate the same type of information.

The research team expects that, as Digit will be part of a package delivery service, this communication channel will also provide delivery specific information, such as where a customer prefers packages to be left, or other individual package delivery needs. 

This communication channel will also allow Digit to ask for help if something unexpected is encountered.

“As online retailing continues growing, we believe robots will help our commercial customers build stronger businesses by making deliveries more efficient and affordable for all of us,” says Ford research and advanced engineering VP and CTO Ken Washington. 

“We learned a lot working with Agility, now we can accelerate our exploratory work with commercial Digit robots.”

Since the first Digit prototype was shown in May last year, Agility Robotics has tested it extensively, refined the design, and added features to be ready for production and sale to customers. 

Upgrades and improvements include more advanced feet that allow Digit to balance on one foot or carefully navigate obstacles, new sensors to perceive and map the world for robot navigation, and customer-ready onboard computer hardware. 

“We’re excited about the technical capabilities and advanced legged mobility of Digit,” notes Agility CTO Dr Jonathan Hurst. 

“Videos can show a solid proof of concept – but this robot is ready to go out in the world in the hands of customers, and start to really explore pragmatic use cases.”

Agility sold its breakthrough robot Cassie as a bipedal research platform from August 2017 through July last year, and has spent the latter half of 2019 transitioning production over to Digit.

“Digit represents a major milestone for Agility,” says Agility CEO Dr Damion Shelton.

“For the first time, a full humanoid robot – with both mobility and manipulation capabilities – will be available for customer applications in a wide variety of industries, both indoor and outdoor. We look forward to showing off our work on both logistics and non-logistics tasks in the coming months.”

Digit has been designed to walk upright, so it can traverse the same types of environments most people do every day. 

Digit’s design also allows it to tightly fold itself up for easy storage in the back of a vehicle until it is called into action. 

Once a vehicle arrives at its destination, Digit can be deployed to grab a package from the vehicle and carry it the final steps in the delivery process. If it encounters an unexpected obstacle, it can send an image back to the vehicle to leverage additional computing power. 

The vehicle could also send that information into the cloud and request help from other systems to enable Digit to navigate, providing multiple levels of assistance that help keep the robot light and nimble. 

Digit’s light weight also helps ensure it has a long run-time, which is essential for delivery businesses that operate continuously through the business day.