AMSTERDAM, Oct 21 (Reuters) - Germany's Agile Robots plans to produce up to 2,000 petite humanoid robots next year under a partnership with Nvidia announced on Wednesday targeting universities and corporate research labs, CEO Zhaopeng Chen said in an interview.
Production of Agile ONE S and ONE SN models will begin by the end of this year, Chen said, adding that the company expects to produce 1,000-2,000, with Stanford University and ETH Zurich among potential customers.
The SN model — N for Nvidia
— has a jointly specified configuration, including dexterous hands, cameras and Nvidia's Jetson Thor onboard computer.
At 1.4 meters tall and weighing about 34 kilograms, the robots are smaller versions of Agile's full-sized humanoid models, making them easier and safer for researchers to handle.
Munich-based Agile, a maker of industrial robots, is one of Europe's early contenders in humanoid robotics, along with NEURA and RobCo of Germany and Humanoid of Britain.
Nvidia has established an early lead in supplying both the processors and software that serve as humanoid robots' brains and nervous systems, building partnerships across the emerging industry.
The partnership combines Nvidia computing and "GR00T" AI model with Agile's hardware to give researchers a ready-to-use system for gathering data and testing skills intended for later use in factories and warehouses.
Spencer Huang, product director for robotics at Nvidia, said having bots with the standardized pre-configuration could save researchers two or three months spent getting separately purchased components working together.
“If we can bring researchers something that's already 80% of the way there, it accelerates their development,” he said.
(Reporting by Toby Sterling and Hakan Ersen; Editing by Jan Harvey)
