During a visit last month to the world’s first humanoid robot factory, the latest edition of Agility Robotics Inc.’s bot lay flat on a table. There were shiny, stainless-steel actuators at its shoulder and hip joints, along with collections of circuits and sensors destined for the head and torso, all connected by neatly ordered sets of wire. It looked eerily similar to a human nervous system. The robot was missing its limbs, part of a prototyping process to validate the design before workers install the hardware into the upcoming generation of Digit, the company’s teal and metal-gray bot. Agility moved into the building it calls RoboFab, on the outskirts of Salem, Oregon, earlier this year. The plant will produce its first bot, the vanguard of Digit’s fourth generation, sometime this month. “We have quite a few to deliver before the end of the year,” Peggy Johnson, Agility’s chief executive officer, said in an interview, without specifying the company’s target. Agility, which has bots working at a Spanx warehouse operated by GXO Logistics Inc., and in testing at Amazon.com Inc. warehouses, is among a number of robot makers that are combining increasingly powerful batteries, motors and sensors with software that can help bots work in spaces designed for humans. The company invited Bloomberg News to RoboFab to witness the progress. The Oregon State University spinoff has set up one of what will be as many as four production lines, with groups of stations set aside for assembly of arms, legs, torsos and head units. Racks full of bins for parts are mostly empty, and engineers are still documenting worker instructions and selecting tools for each job role.

Full report : Agility Robotics, the Oregon company already has robots working in a Spanx warehouse and running trials at Amazon facilities.