Digit humanoid robot creator Agility Robotics has partnered with global service delivery company Ricoh USA, in a move to expand Agility’s customer support capabilities across North America.
The agreement, which the companies describe as a first-of-its-kind for a humanoid robot, extends Agility’s support system through Ricoh’s Service Advantage program and offers additional resources for end users.
Agility’s Digit humanoid robot is designed to work alongside a human workforce in factories and industrial sites and help with repetitive tasks.
Jim Kirby, vice president of Service Advantage, Ricoh North America, said as the global warehouse automation market continues to experience double-digit growth, the need to keep the related technology, automation and robotics up and running, as well as adapt to new workflows, becomes even more critical.
“We are excited to collaborate with Agility to support their customers’ automated warehouse solutions and ensure the humanoid robots being deployed are coupled with a world-class service promise,” he said.
Under the partnership, Ricoh would support Agility’s Digit humanoid robots, as well as the company’s Agility Arc cloud automation platform for managing and deploying Digit fleets.
“Our goal is for every end user deployment to be successful, with respect 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 all over the world and adds an additional layer of expert support should a customer need our assistance.”
The news follows June’s announcement that Agility Robotics signed a multi-year deal with GXO to deploy the Digit humanoid robot in GXO’s logistics operations.
The move follows GXO’s pilot program late last year and the agreement is the industry’s “first formal commercial deployment of humanoid robots and first robots-as-a-service (RaaS) deployment of humanoid robots,” according to the company.
Earlier this year, Amazon began deploying Agility Robotics humanoid robot Digit at its robotics research and development facility south of Seattle as part of a test project for possible wide-scale rollout.
Last year, Agility Robotics announced it was opening a humanoid robotics factory in Salem, Oregon, for the mass production of the Digit humanoid robot.
The 70,000-square-foot 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 the first year, with the capacity to scale to more than 10,000 of the robots annually.
