Humanoid Robots in Packaging Part 1: Continuous Upgrades, Some Industry Adoption

Looking ahead, Agility plans to further develop Digit in a few ways that optimize the system for use in packaging and processing.

One major focus is ease of integration. Whether it’s a packaging system or other type of machinery, Agility is developing methods to more easily integrate with other machinery on the production floor, helping it to mesh with current operations and machinery investments.

Another area of development is in material handling and specifically end-of-arm tooling. To help its customers avoid potential issues with packaging damage or other sensitivity issues, Agility aims to meet businesses where they are.

“We’re working with customers to provide an interface so that, if they already have specialized tooling for handling their products, or they require specialized tooling, we can work with them to develop that, so that we don’t damage or endanger the product,” Wise says. “We want to be able to adapt anything from [EoAT suppliers’] catalogs onto our robot.”

A lot has changed in the world of AI in recent years, and while Agility engages with these advancements, it does so with a pragmatic approach, avoiding too much change too fast, explains Wise. “No one wants to get a software update that takes down their production line,” she says.

To contain any major issues when adding new AI functionality, “much of our stack is modularized, so that we can basically test and create policies or solutions for our customers that can be tested and meet the robustness requirements that our customers care about,” Wise says.

This also helps to avoid conflating two unrelated problems—if each aspect of the robot is segmented, Agility can update a single feature without impacting other areas.

Paving a new path in safety standards

The Digit V4 currently works inside a work cell, which itself required meeting several safety standards to achieve, let alone working alongside people, according to Wise. This includes the e-stop, Category 1 and Category 0 stopping behaviors, and auditory and visual indicators to indicate the robot’s current mode and operational condition.

“We’ve met all of those requirements, and this is a steppingstone for our next version of the robot,” Wise says. Looking ahead, the company plans to complete its V5 robot by the end of 2026, slated to be “fully cooperatively safe, and we’ll meet the requirements for not only the North American market, but also the European market.”

There’s no specific universally accepted standard for humanoid robots, posing a regulatory hurdle for suppliers’ goals of fully cooperative solutions.

It’s not completely uncharted territory; in the U.S., the standard ANSI R15.08 lays out safety requirements for all industrial mobile robots, including autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) and mobile manipulation robots (MMRs), which covers humanoid robot technology today. But it doesn’t include language to differentiate the features that make humanoids unique from a typical AMR, Wise explains.

Amazon announced in 2023 it would begin testing the Digit humanoid robot, beginning with the repetitive task of tote recycling.Amazon“There are parts of that standard that are silent on how to handle the legged aspect, the dynamically stable aspect of the robot,” Wise says. “It doesn’t give permission for exception behavior or ways of handling it; you have to follow the more rigorous standards set by industrial machinery standards.”

The European market doesn’t currently have such a standard under ISO, but some humanoid robot suppliers including Agility are involved in developing an ISO standard, ISO 25785-1, which would provide more clarity and permissions for the unique attributes of humanoids over the more general ISO industrial robot standards like ISO 10218.

“When you look at standards, what they’re actually doing is becoming more permissive as you get specific standards,” Wise says. “We’re hoping that we’ll be able to unify the North American and European standards. It’s useful because it provides more permission for how to handle certain technology, but it’s not restricting our ability to enter the market.”

Apptronik’s Apollo emphasizes human-centered design

Humanoid robot supplier Apptronik approaches its Apollo robot design with human interaction at front of mind.

“We see us as quite differentiated from other humanoids on the market, which are more born out of the robot that has become a humanoid, as opposed to something that is organically designed around being a humanoid that people want to be around,” says Parker Conroy, senior director of product at Apptronik.Apptronik's Apollo humanoid robotApptronik

Apptronik has also been operating for nearly a decade, first launching out of the UT Austin Human Centered Robotics Lab in 2016. The company debuted its Alpha version of Apollo in 2023.

This human-centered ethos includes features as simple as “a pleasant face that you want to be around,” Conroy says, describing a goal to integrate Apollo into society down the road. “But our first step is going to be in commercial duty and light duty industrial environments.”

To better serve variable tasks in industrial environments, that human-centered design extends head to toe, informing decisions like the choice of legs over wheels.

“We’re interested in wheels, but at the end, I think legs are going to be more general, and the real goal of a humanoid is a system that can do many things throughout the day. If it needs to climb over a stair or bend down and get something real low, that form factor works really well,” Conroy says. “It is a huge challenge form a control standpoint to have this many degrees of freedom and do dynamic stability. But I think because it’s closer to human form, it’s going to be better served in brownfield installations.”

The generalization afforded by this design especially suits it for the CPG space, in which Apptronik already has a few undisclosed partners, Conroy says. In such a fast-moving industry where operations or packaging can change to meet the needs of the end consumer, “I would say our overall solution of being able to connect with an MES or WMS, take in new information, read the same training documents that staff are reading to understand how to do a job, allows us to move as fast as the end-consumer is moving,” he explains.Apptronik's Apollo features legs to support general tasks like climbing stairs or bending downward.Apptronik

A humanoid robot such as Apollo could also help CPGs fill labor shortages without making major changes to a plant’s workflow, Conroy says. It transforms decisions like installing an autonomous guided vehicle (AGV) or continuing with pallet jacks operated by workers. If those positions are chronically unfilled, a humanoid could step in and provide support while keeping the pallet jacks.

“The real promise of the humanoid is to be able to add a backstop or a low watermark to help the staff through their labor challenges,” Conroy says.

Advancements in software and hardware

Apptronik has made a few notable improvements to its Apollo robot since the company was first featured in Packaging World’s 2023 report. One major milestone is in AI technology through a partnership with Google DeepMind announced in December 2024.

The benefits of the deal with Google go both ways, as Conroy describes it: “These LLMs [Large Language Models] or multimodal systems that we’ve seen large organizations like Google create, as they become more intelligent, they start to run out of data in a way. Our systems are a way to take that AI and make it embodied. You need to be able to house that AI in a device that enables it to continue to learn and really flex its skills entirely.”

In contrast to traditional robot systems that may require adjustment if operations vary, a humanoid powered with AI can work much more generally.

“Once [humanoids] have a good understanding of the sort of items that they work with, they can tell that a can of soda is a can of soda, even if it’s a Sprite or a Pepsi or Dr. Pepper,” Conroy says. “In CPG where packaging is changing constantly, that’s something that makes a piece of automation that much more powerful.”

Further on the software side, Apptronik has added a fleet manager, allowing operators to task individual robots and organize their work.

“It’s a single access point for IT and OT systems for customers that want to connect a WMS or MES to our fleet of robots. It allows us to retain diagnostic information and send that off to our service teams,” Conroy says.

The hardware side has received some upgrades as well. Apptronik builds its own controllers and actuators, and has consolidated several of these systems, making some repairs as simple as removing a few pins and swapping out parts.

 “In any piece of industrial equipment, uptime and time to repair is really critical, and humanoids are a very quickly changing technology, so we want to be able to improve that system very quickly,” Conroy says.

With these upgrades in place, Apptronik positions itself as an adaptable automation solution for flexible industrial environments like consumer packaged goods. At the end of the day though, it’s up to CPGs to decide whether humanoids are a good fit on the production line.

Are CPGs ready to get started with humanoid robots, though? Watch out for part two of this series, where we ask CPG engineering leaders about their current interest in this technology, its potential use cases, and any hurdles to adoption.