US Logistics Company Begins Hiring Robots as Employees
Quoted from IOT TodayThursday (12/9), Agility’s humanoid robot Digit is designed to work alongside human workers in factories and industrial locations and assist with repetitive tasks.
Jim Kirby, vice president of services for Ricoh North America, said that as the global warehouse automation market continues to experience double-digit growth, the need to keep related technologies, automation and robotics running and adapting to new workflows becomes increasingly important.
“We are excited to collaborate with Agility to support their customers’ automated warehousing solutions and ensure the humanoid robots they deploy come with a world-class service promise,” he said.
Under the partnership, Ricoh will support Agility’s Digit humanoid robots, as well as the company’s Agility Arc cloud automation platform to manage and deploy the Digit fleet.
“Our goal is for every end-user deployment to be successful, with regards to uptime, safety and overall success,” said Rich Bohne, chief commercial officer at Agility Robotics.
“This partnership with Ricoh gives us eyes, ears and hands around the world and adds an extra layer of expert support should customers need our help,” he said.
The news follows the announcement in June that Agility Robotics signed a multi-year deal with GXO to employ Digit humanoid robots in GXO’s logistics operations.
Earlier this year, Amazon also began deploying Agility Robotics Digit humanoid robots at its robotics research and development facility south of Seattle as part of a pilot project for a possible wide-scale rollout.
Last year, Agility Robotics announced it would open a humanoid robot factory in Salem, Oregon, for mass production of the Digit humanoid robot.
The 21,000-square-meter facility, dubbed RoboFab, is believed to be the first of its kind dedicated to mass-producing commercial robots. The site is expected to produce hundreds of Digit robots in its first year, with the capacity to scale to more than 10,000 robots annually.
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