Agility Robotics CEO On How Robots Are Getting Paid To Fill Labor Gaps

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Robots are coming for our jobs — at least the repetitive, back-breaking jobs humans increasingly don't want to do.

Peggy Johnson, the Silicon Valley veteran who became the chief executive of Agility Robotics earlier this year, told Business Insider that it'd soon be "very normal" for humanoid robots to become coworkers with humans across a variety of workplaces.

Many factories in the US are struggling to recruit workers amid a labor shortage that Deloitte predicted could cost the economy as much as $1 trillion by 2030. In January, there were 622,000 manufacturing jobs that hadn't been filled, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics .

"First in the business-enterprise space because that's where the need is highest. And then, as Digit learns new skills, it'll start to be able to go beyond logistics and manufacturing facilities and eventually, somewhere way down the line, is consumer robots," Johnson said in an interview at the Web Summit tech event in Lisbon earlier this month.

Digit is Agility Robotics' mobile manipulation humanoid robot. It stands at 5-foot-9 and has hands designed to grip and carry objects. Its backward-folding legs allow it to maneuver around a workspace. Digit also has animated LED eyes that act as indicators to its human coworkers to let them know which function it's about to perform next.

This year, Digit became the first humanoid robot to be "paid" for performing a job. Agility Robotics signed a multiyear deal with GXO Logistics for Digit to be deployed in its Spanx womenswear factories, with it moving boxes known as totes and placing them onto conveyor belts.

Agility Robotics charges a monthly fee, similar to a software-as-a-service model, which includes the Digit robot, its work cell, and the robot's operating software.

While Agility Robotics hasn't disclosed the exact amount its Digit robots are paid, the company has previously said that GXO is estimated to see a return on its investment within two years, based on the equivalent of a human working an hourly rate of $30.