Ford's Two-Legged Robot walk Packages to your Door
by Sean Williamson WriterFord’s motor company has been moving undeviatingly on the path towards fully
autonomous driving vans license-able to package/fast-food delivery
companies. Their applications are numerous, and
this is just the beginning of autonomous driving systems. After Ford’s self-driving
vans, they wanted to eliminate human intervention even from taking the package
out of the vehicle and deliver it at doors. Agility Robotics came to the rescue
this time, they managed to raise $8.8 million in seed funding after the release
of their first bipedal model, Cassie. We will talk about it in detail below.
This
time around, they developed an improvised version of Cassie and named it
‘Digit’, equipped with pseudo-hands capable of delivering packages to your
doorstep.
The “last 50-foot” problem
The “last 50-foot” problem, as intriguing as it sounds, is the
automobile companies trying to reduce the need for human intervention in
package delivery processes to a bare minimum. Self-driving vehicles have
already resolved the issue of transporting packages from one location to
another.
However, when it comes to delivering packages from curb to door,
humanoid robots like Digit came to the rescue! Ford isn’t the only company that
proposed to solve the “last 50-foot” problem. Boston Dynamics came with its quadrupedal-package-delivering-alternative. On
the contrary, Ford defends its bipedal alternative for this purpose, owing to
its greater flexibility and better navigating abilities on rougher terrains.
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Meet ‘Digit’ the
two-legged robot
Agility Robotics came to existence in 2015 as a commercialized
byproduct of Dynamic Robotics Laboratory by Oregon State University. The
laboratory specializes in research on bipedal-locomotion. Their first
development was ATRIAS, 2015, a
result of a 7-year research program, based on the dynamics of animals. Followed
by Cassie, 2016, an engineering
optimization of ATRIAS. It was further refined to V3, that was eventually
released on a commercial scale in 2017.
Fast forward to the year 2019, Agility robotics revealed their
newest development, Digit. This one comes with additional computing power, arms,
and torso from Cassie. Digit comes
with four degree-of-freedom (4-DOF) arms significantly enhancing the utility of
this robot.
Digit is capable of picking and stacking boxes weighing up to
40lb, approximately 18 kg. By virtue of its hands, it is capable of restoring
to its position after a fall, decelerate using
its arms, and push open a door. In short, it is capable of moving through
complex human environments.
Ford Partners with Agility
Robotics
The time isn’t too far when bipedal robots will deliver
parcels to your doorsteps coming in driverless vehicles. Ford announced its
pilot partnership with Agility Robotics, to test ‘Digit’s’ suitability for its
futuristic, AI enabled package delivery system.
The vision, as shown in a video released by Ford Motor The company, depicting a humanoid robot spreading out of a self-driving package
delivery van. The video shows a self-driving car arriving at the destination,
opening its trunk unwinding a robot, it scans the deliverable package, and off
it goes to the receiver. Digit is capable of coordinating its positioning data
with the van’s connection in case of an obstacle causing confusion in its
trajectory.
Digit’s bipedal design helps it steer through the rougher
terrains like inclines, steps, cracks and minor hurdles. Ford hasn’t yet
announced investing capital in the startup, but the folks at Agility expect that
the $8.8 million raised from seed funding will help them in launching the next
generation Digit model in summers or by early fall.
Ford’s other Autonomous
Ventures
Digit isn’t the first AI enabled autonomous venture Ford chose
to invest in. Before Digit, Ford went into investing a significant amount of
capital into Argo AI, a self-driving tech-start-up based in Pittsburgh. The
company is developing autonomous options for different partners who are
expected to rebrand the product and offer it commercially.
The company has invested $1 billion in Argo AI. It expects to
launch an operational fleet of autonomous cars by 2021.
Ford, America’s second-largest carmaker, recently ventures in
a subsidiary, Ford Autonomous Vehicles LLC. It has plans to invest $4 billion
in developing autonomous vehicles during the next four years. It is partnering
with brands like Domino’s, Lyft, Walmart and Postmates in cities like
Washington, D.C., Detroit, Miami, etc.
Ford, the second largest car manufacturer in the US, has shown
a significant interest in self-driving automobiles. It intends to commercialize
this product and sell it to potential customers like Domino’s, Target and Lyft.
It can serve them in human-less delivery of packages and helping people with
their commutes.
The main idea behind reducing human involvement in services
like these is to let the machines handle simpler tasks and optimize the human
brain utilization in more complex and important tasks.
Test Launch
Ford launched the autonomous pilot, earlier in Miami, in
collaboration with fast food delivery partner: Domino’s. The pilot project was success and the two companies are polishing it further to come up with the
best way to utilize Digit’s humanoid abilities optimally.
Similarly, a Lyft customer can schedule a ride in an
autonomous vehicle using his mobile phone app.
The company aims to launch an improvised version of Digit
before fall, this year and the CEO of Agility Robotics quoted that they aim to
produce 50-100 units by 2021.
What do you think of this development? Let us know in the
comments below!
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Created on Jul 4th 2019 04:49. Viewed 623 times.