Agility Robotics' Digit humanoid matures through five design iterations
Agility Robotics has developed five versions of its Digit humanoid over a decade, starting with the bipedal Cassie research platform. The latest Digit 5 is designed around real-world industrial tasks, reflecting lessons from deployments in partner facilities. The company now operates a factory capable of producing up to 10,000 robots annually.
Agility's origins trace to Oregon State University's Dynamic Robotics Lab, where Cassie was developed for high-speed bipedal locomotion. Its ostrich-like leg design, initially coincidental, proved effective, leading to a Guinness World Record for a 100-meter run in 2022. The first Digit in 2017 marked a shift from pure research to a proof-of-concept phase aimed at researchers.
Commercialization began with Digit 3 in 2019, which could handle 40-pound boxes and was sold to Ford for delivery experiments. Digit 4, released in 2023, dropped the bird-like legs and focused on warehouse tasks, with deployments at Amazon and Toyota. The company now operates a factory with an annual capacity of 10,000 units, reflecting its maturation.
The maturation of humanoids like Digit 5 could reshape industrial labor, potentially automating repetitive tasks in warehouses and delivery. This may ease labor shortages and improve safety, but could also displace workers in those roles. As these robots scale to thousands of units, society may need to consider retraining programs and new safety standards for human-robot collaboration, though the immediate impact remains limited to specific logistics tasks.