Charting a Path Toward a Blended Workforce
By Jonathan Hurst, Chief Technology Officer
I remember, early in my graduate career at Carnegie Mellon, gathering with a few roboticists and biomechanics experts seeking to understand how dynamic legged gaits worked. We all sought to uncover the complex truths of animal performance, some with particular interest in furthering their scientific understanding while others focused on medical advances or developing better human exoskeletons.
Hurst with his prototype leg joint, "Actuator with Mechanically Adjustable Series Compliance (AMASC),” at the Robotics Institute’s Microdynamic Systems Lab at Carnegie Mellon in 2002
My focus was on reproducing animal performance in robotic systems. Physics is the same for robots and for animals – so I knew robots could achieve animal and human levels of physical performance! Such capability would enable the dream of robotics: a future where people will work and live side-by-side with robots, on our terms and in our environments.
When Damion Shelton and I met as graduate students, we shared the dream of starting a robotics company aimed at bringing this vision to life. We believed then that the emerging technologies in legged locomotion would make a viable business opportunity possible at some point in our careers, and were aligned from the start that robots should be built for society’s greater good. He pursued an entrepreneurial path while I pursued an academic one and, when the stars aligned in 2015, we founded Agility Robotics along with Mikhail Jones, my star student. Our team has since grown – employees, investors, and customers have joined the cause – and today we’ve taken a giant leap toward materializing our vision.
I am thrilled to share that Agility has raised $150M in Series B funding led by our longtime investors and partners, DCVC and Playground Global.
Agility is creating the future of robotics.
Today, the most useful robots are single-purpose machines built to do one automated task well. Examples include everyday dishwashers, robot arms on manufacturing lines, or automated forklifts. On the flip side, multipurpose automation is more challenging: it requires greater intelligence, an adaptable form factor, and greater complexity. But consider analogies in the animal kingdom: while some species are specialized or adapted to their environment, the most successful species – including people – are generalists. We can do many things well enough, and we’re adaptable. A fleet of robots that can do many things and flex to demand and workflow needs will be more useful than a fleet of single-purpose robots.
Digit, Agility Robotics' robot, moving packages full of sorted goods inside a warehouse
At Agility, we’re building robots that are designed not just with near-human form but also with human dynamics in physical interaction, enabling them to move seamlessly through our workspaces. These robots can walk, crouch low to pick up a box from the floor, reach to place a box high on a shelf, balance when bumped into, pause when sensing a person or barrier in its path, and maneuver around a barrier. Sequenced together, these skills enable real task versatility in a workplace filled with people. This dynamism and versatility are what enable them to handle the boring, repetitive, and sometimes painful tasks that should be automated.
The need for flexible automation is acute.
Our work at Agility began years before the COVID-19 pandemic crippled supply chains or “The Great Resignation” became a part of our everyday lexicon. While Damion and I knew there was an unmet need for versatile warehouse robots, we couldn’t have predicted just how critically this need would grow.
Today there are more than 11 million job openings in America, creating a widespread labor shortage that is stifling business. Meanwhile, those working in warehouses and logistics are hard-hit – people are tired from the repetitive work of stocking, packing, and moving – tasks that are responsible for more than 200,000 injuries per year. These strains are compounded by supply delays and shortages and unpredictable consumer demand. To solve this complex labor puzzle, robots are needed to lift the burden of hard, manual labor, provide workforce flexibility, and enable people to do work that requires creativity and judgment – inherently human traits.
Walking – and running! – forward
With the support of our investors and this fresh capital in hand, we're applying years of research and customer-backed insights to our current project, the development of our most advanced robot to date – a fully commercialized robot that we’ll begin to sell to qualified enterprises later this year. This robot will perform tasks that have traditionally been difficult to automate, like depalletizing warehouse boxes and unloading tractor-trailers. We can’t wait to share more.
Our robots represent the next chapter in robotics: robots that are designed to help the people around them. As we chart a path to a blended human-robot workforce, we’re struck by the significance of this important milestone to our company’s history and future.
Today, our dreams from so long ago are beginning to materialize. It’s a great day.
April 22, 2022
