Agility Robotics has unveiled a new bipedal robot named Digit, which adds an upper torso, arms, sensors, and additional computing power to the company’s Cassie robot design. Digit’s four degree-of-freedom (4-DOF) arms greatly extend both the mobility and utility of Digit, as compared to Cassie.

Digit

Agility is teaming up with Ford Motor to explore expanding deliveries from autonomous vehicles to include the final step of getting the delivery from the car to the recipient’s door.

Since self-driving vehicles can potentially move people and goods simultaneously, they hold great potential to make deliveries even more convenient and efficient. A ride-hailing trip could double as a delivery service, dropping off packages in between transporting passengers. And as we’ve learned in our pilot programs, it’s not always convenient for people to leave their homes to retrieve deliveries or for businesses to run their own delivery services. If we can free people up to focus less on the logistics of making deliveries, they can turn their time and effort to things that really need their attention.

Enter Digit, a two-legged robot designed and built by Agility Robotics to not only approximate the look of a human, but to walk like one, too. Built out of lightweight material and capable of lifting packages that weigh up to 40 pounds, Digit can go up and down stairs, walk naturally through uneven terrain, and even react to things like being bumped without losing its balance and falling over.

—Dr. Ken Washington, Vice President, Ford Research and Advanced Engineering, and Chief Technology Officer

For us, arms are simultaneously a tool for moving through the world—think getting up after a fall, waving your arms for balance, or pushing open a door—while also being useful for manipulating or carrying objects.

—Dr. Jonathan Hurst, CTO and co-founder of Agility

These new capabilities are important when moving through complex, human-oriented environments, for tasks such as curb-to-doorstep delivery.

Although still in testing, Digit is strong enough to pick up and stack boxes weighing up to 40 lb (18 kg), as well as durable enough to catch itself during a fall using its arms to decelerate.

In addition to the physical changes, the control system for Digit has been overhauled to enable advanced behaviors such as stair climbing and footstep planning, all controlled through a robust API that can be accessed both onboard the robot and via a wireless link.

Further, Digit’s torso houses two multi-core CPUs, and a modular payload bay allows a third computer—in a variety of possible form factors—to support additional perception and reinforcement learning capabilities.

Out-of-the-box, Digit will be up and walking within five minutes, even for users who are not legged locomotion control researchers.

Most of our Cassie customers were specifically interested in developing controllers for legged locomotion. We developed Digit for the much larger audience of users who wish to explore broader applications that are enabled through legged mobility, rather than focusing only on the mobility itself.

—Dr. Damion Shelton, CEO and co-founder of Agility

Launched in mid 2017, Cassie is a highly capable, rugged, bipedal research platform in use by numerous customers.

As with Cassie, Digit will come with comprehensive warranty support and post-sales applications engineering assistance. Agility will announce Digit pricing mid-year, with deliveries beginning Q1 2020.

Founded in 2015, Agility Robotics manufactures highly capable bipedal robots for diverse markets such as last-mile logistics, telepresence, automated inspection, entertainment, and academic research.