Humanoid Robots Entering the Workforce
Our CEO, Peggy Johnson, sat down with famed journalist Bob Safian for the Rapid Response podcast to discuss all things humanoid robots. They separate science fiction from reality, and Peggy explains how Digit is entering the workforce as a helpful tool to augment existing employees and help them do more than they ever could before. The full transcript of their conversation is included below.
BOB
From augmented reality to robots, you were last on the show in December of 2020. You'd become CEO of Magic Leap in the heat of the pandemic, and now you've taken on a new CEO role again, at Agility Robotics, can you catch us up on how you got from there to here?
PEGGY
So, at the time that we spoke, I think I was just a few months into the role at Magic Leap. At the time we successfully turned things around, we repointed the company toward an Enterprise Focus. I felt like I'd done what I came there to do. I think augmented reality is still very early days, and while I love the game-changing aspect of it. It will become part of our everyday lives at some point, the trajectory is on a slower slope I would say than robotics. When I saw the opportunity at Agility, from the outside looking at the company, it appeared they had product-market-fit and a huge demand for what they could do. Which is putting humanoid robots into the open jobs that people don't want. I felt like that was the spot for me, so I made the jump. I’m super excited about the space, humanoids are kind of having a moment right now.
BOB
I was thinking back. When we talked the last time, there was an assumption about the acceleration of tech adoption and where that would lead and change our habits. It didn't quite persist the way everyone predicted at that moment right?
PEGGY
Correct, and you know, as I said, it will happen. It's going to take some time. The interesting thing about humanoids right now, is they have this huge tailwind of open jobs. They are kind of repetitive and dull, people don't want them. Those jobs just in the logistics areas have doubled over the last five years from about 600,000 open jobs to over a million open jobs. Humanoids can play that role there when you can't find humans to do these jobs.
BOB
I mean, there are all kinds of robots used in business right now, and a lot of them look like machines or motorized carts or things like that, but Agility has this human-like robot that you call Digit. One of your colleagues said robots are nothing new, but humanoid robots are. So there is this burst of attention on human-like robots. Why is that?
PEGGY
What's interesting is automation in warehouse facilities, and manufacturing facilities have been around for over a decade. They're magical how much automation is going on. Like inside, for instance, an Amazon facility. But there are these pockets still of humans that are maybe moving a box from a conveyor belt over to what's called a Putwall where it's a stacked wall that's automated, and you can almost think of that as the Achilles heel of all of that fantastic automation.
There are these islands in the middle where humans are the glue in between, and it's those jobs that can't be filled. If you can't find the humans, humanoids are a great substitute. They can work for long hours, they don't get hurt, they don't get emotional, they don't have anything that you have to worry about. It's just do this job, this dull, repetitive job, that humans don't typically love.
BOB
When I mentioned to my wife that I was talking to someone today about robots, her first reaction was, oh someone who's taking all the jobs away, and what you're saying is these are jobs that most people don't want?
PEGGY
Exactly, in fact, when they do get deployed people feel a lot of times the job for a human is to manage the fleet of robots and manage the interactivity between the robots and the other automated facilities. That is something that looks more like a career, it's a very digital job. For instance, we have a cloud platform called Agility Arc that helps people manage a fleet of robots. It has interactivity with other robotics, and different types of automated systems in these facilities. So, the human opportunity goes from lifting boxes from A to B to running a digital platform.
BOB
I've seen videos of Digit and some are a little spooky, like when you go to visit these facilities, does it feel natural? What kind of relationships do workers, the human workers, have with the robots?
PEGGY
We thought a lot about that with Digit. We have a head on Digit that initially we didn't have. Since that time, we've put cameras in and other sensors that are helpful to solutions that we're working on. For instance, you don't generally need five fingers you can do many things just with a gripper hand, we can actually swap out our hands, and you can think of it as a tool. That notwithstanding, we put a head on. It has cute eyes, and you can do different things with the eyes like sparkles and hearts, and there is a reaction with humans, a positive reaction. It’s like, oh they're here to help, that's the teammate who's doing that work I don't like. There is a connection there because of that head and the fact that there are eyes. I will say these humanoids operate inside of a work cell. The idea of what's called collaborative robots, where you can actually interact with a human, is a little bit further down the line. There are very high safety standards, but right now, we operate inside work cells
BOB
Yeah and I've seen their sort of knees bend a different way than humans do, like there are things about them that are… is Digit a he a she? How do you talk about Digit?
PEGGY
I refer to Digit as an it. It's a funny question because people do want to put characterization on the humanoid robot, we we let them do what they'd like.
BOB
AI is changing all kinds of businesses. There was news today that Open AI is reopening its robotics unit. I'm not sure exactly what that means. I'm not sure even that they are sure what that means. How are you using AI or thinking about using AI to change Digit?
PEGGY
We've been using AI in the form of reinforcement learning, so it's been part of how we've developed Digit. The big opportunity that we see going forward is this idea of Digit’s semantic intelligence, so giving Digit commands unstructured. The other day, we said go pick up all this trash, and Digit looked around, and it picked up the trash and put it in the right bins. Going forward how AI is going to help us, it can teach Digit new skills much more easily rather than having an engineer program it. Having the ability to tap into data built from these foundation models is going to allow us to learn new skills much more quickly.
BOB
Is it like uploading new software to upgrade the system within it or is the AI sort of self-learning the way generative AI is where it learns sometimes in ways that you're not exactly sure how it's learning, but it's coming up with something?
PEGGY
Exactly, it's the latter, and it's why you don't want to use AI fully to control the robot right now because, as we know, it's not always perfect. When you have a robot that weighs 160 pounds or so and has all the torque it has in its hands to lift up heavy things, you want to be controlling that with a known platform, and so until we're much further along with AI, we aren't going to make that Swap.
BOB
You're leaning into this industrial use. Is there a vision for Digit to be in stores and retail environments, interacting with customers and people? Or is that sort of a different track?
PEGGY
We're only starting with these industrial applications because the need is so high, exacerbated by the labor shortage, but this is a multi-purpose humanoid, so it's meant to go off into those areas you talked about. Retail, transportation, in fact we're already talking to customers in those spaces. I think we're talking to five or six Automotive companies, and each of them has a current need, but they have a vision for their future needs. Digit will be replacing the end effectors, or the hands, with different sorts of tools we can do very bespoke work for someone just by swapping out the end effector.
You've seen a few of the consumer robots sort of come and go. Households, as it turns out, are pretty messy places. Things inside a warehouse are much more structured, so the need is greater there. That's where we're going to focus, and that's where the revenue is.
BOB
So you and I have known each other for a while from Qualcomm and Microsoft, and then Magic Leap. At Magic Leap, when you came in, it was a high-profile name even if its reputation had been diminished. With Agility Robotics you're starting from a more modest base, so how do you think about spreading the word, differentiating yourself? Or do you just feel like you stick to your knitting and that stuff takes care of itself?
PEGGY
We are staying focused. You'll see us show up at supply chain conferences, automation conferences, that sort of thing. You won't see us at some of the more generic technical conferences, we're just staying focused on the areas where the revenues at. That's actually been powerful for us, we're also building an ecosystem of partners so for instance we just announced a deal with Manhattan, which is a warehouse management software company. They've got 1,200… 1300 customers all over the world, we can be part of their solutions, and that helps a small company like us punch above our weight.
BOB
You were a first-time CEO at Magic Leap. What did you learn from that experience that you're applying now? What are you doing differently?
PEGGY
When I first stepped in at Magic Leap, they were chasing a lot of markets, and we narrowed that down to Enterprise. Somewhat the same here, we get a lot of attention from companies who have Innovation departments for instance. I respect the Innovation departments, but if they're, they don't have an intention to deploy and a reason and a problem to solve. We don't focus there. We pick up and move on. We don't want to be an interesting demo for someone's boardroom frankly.
BOB
You're not just going to be sort of experimenting so that sometime down the road maybe that turns into business, that's not the game you're playing?
PEGGY
Exactly. We can deploy right now, and we have an ROI for customers right now, so we want to stay very focused.
BOB
I mean early stage is really different than you know when you're further along as you were at Qualcomm and at Microsoft.
PEGGY
It is different. There are a lot of hats that you wear when you're early in the stage. We don't have massive marketing teams, so we have to be creative about our marketing dollars. So it's about working within constraints, working within a budget. It’s quite a bit different than how I would operate at Qualcomm and Microsoft, where you have a lot of support around you that you can tap into.
BOB
You did a lot of partnership work at Microsoft also, which sounds like it's similar to what you're trying to put together where you are now?
PEGGY
I definitely believe in the value of Partnerships. It helps you get where you want to go much faster. You can have the vision, well I can do this all on my own. But the time it takes to get there oftentimes trips you up and causes you to miss the opportunity. So if we can find a partner that can help us in our vision we will partner, and we're doing that right now. We are talking to other robot companies, so autonomous mobile robots look like a big pallet on wheels. They'll bring the product up to us, we are working together with them and can unload from there, and then maybe put it on a conveyor belt, which is also a kind of a robot, an automated conveyor belt, and those are the sorts of things that allow for a complete solution to be delivered to a customer.
BOB
So there's an existing gap in the warehouse that Digit is filling, but if you can partner with the right people on either side, you can offer what is essentially an end-to-end solution that doesn't currently exist.
PEGGY
Exactly, and that's where our customers are focused. They are like, help me solve this problem I have here when I can't get people to step into these gaps. We have to be enterprise-hardened to do that, this is not demoware we're not you know, doing backflips and making coffee. We are working and you know, we have to fit into their corporate IT infrastructure. We have to meet their safety standards, so all of that comes together in a complete solution because if we can't meet that bar, we can't enter those facilities.
BOB
When you left Microsoft, it was sort of just starting to come out of hibernation in a certain way, like it hadn't really hit its stride. Now, thanks to AI and Co-Pilot, the arrangement with Open AI, things are just cooking over there. Do you ever think about the decision to leave and wonder, what if I'd stayed, like what if I was in the thick of all that hot AI stuff now?
Actually never, I loved my time there. I loved working for Satya Nadella, I learned so much from him. He's clearly an iconic leader, but I remember very clearly the day I made up my mind. It was actually only a few weeks into covid lockdown. At the time, no one could see the other side of this, and we didn't know how long this thing was going to go on. I think nobody thought it would go on as long as it did, but I think, like a lot of people, had a little bit of time to think. My job, in particular, slowed down. It was in business development, running very outwardly facing. I got on planes all the time, that was not available anymore.
So, I really sat and thought about where I was in my career, and I had always wanted to be a CEO. I think, like a lot of people, you keep saying, well, if I just had a little more experience here, a little more experience there, then I'll be ready. And I just thought, I don't know when this thing is going to end, this pandemic. I'm just going to start looking, and I did, and now that I've been and had the experience at Magic Leap and now at Agility. I could never see myself going back. I like the startup environment. I like the pace. I like the freedom and the flexibility to make decisions very, very quickly. You know, the bigger the company it is, the harder is to get to a yes or a no. It's just, let's debate that a little longer, and so I love the fast-paced environment at startups, and I don't see myself leaving at this point.
BOB
So even a CEO role at a bigger place just isn't as appealing right now?
PEGGY
It really isn't, and you know, even in a public company, you have to do compliance, all of those things. Those are not something I think anyone looks forward to. They're just part of running a public company of that size. I'm at the point in my career where I can do anything I want, and so this is what I want to do, and I absolutely love it.
