Agility Robotics, the firm I cofounded out of my robotics lab at Oregon State University in 2015, has simply launched Digit 5. It’s designed to be the primary humanoid robotic that may safely and economically do helpful work at scale, permitting us to deliver tens of 1000’s of humanoid staff into the actual world. Engineered to raise 23-kilogram bins onto excessive cabinets and with a battery that may run for 90 minutes on a 9-minute cost, Digit 5’s objective is to deal with heavy warehouse duties shift after shift, filling the necessity for labor in jobs which are too bodily disturbing or too uninteresting for people to wish to do.
Digit 5 is what Agility has been working towards for over a decade. However the robotic is heavy and ponderous, missing the sleek pure movement of its predecessors, and it’s farther than I assumed doable from the robotic I dreamed of constructing once I began this firm. To ship a helpful business product, Agility has taken a path that may be very completely different from what I first imagined.
From ATRIAS to Digit
My dream has all the time been to construct robots that mix locomotion and manipulation to maneuver by the world and work together with it as folks do. I search a mastery of movement, achieved by gadgets designed to navigate the constraints of physics with magnificence. Once I began the Dynamic Robotics Laboratory at Oregon State in 2008, we started with a principle derived from many years of labor in biomechanics: {that a} easy “spring-mass” mannequin (a physique supported by legs that act like springs) ought to be capable to reproduce each recognized strolling and operating gait present in animals.
We put principle into apply by constructing the bipedal robotic ATRIAS—quick for “Assume The Robotic Is A Sphere,” a joke among physicists about decreasing a posh system to its easiest doable kind. ATRIAS seemed like a big microwave on stilts as a result of it was solely meant to reveal the physics of human strolling and operating. This was the primary glimmer of attaining my dream; despite the fact that ATRIAS wasn’t designed to appear to be us, it nonetheless appeared pure, and even one way or the other alive, when it settled right into a strolling gait.
With the success of ATRIAS, the limitations to progress shifted from scientific to engineering and organizational, and a startup firm appeared like the best way to bridge the hole from a one-off analysis idea to an precise robotic product. I felt assured of two issues: that I might be capable to construct robots that might go the place folks go, and that this functionality can be extremely helpful. This mix of ambition and naivete is critical for anybody to discovered a brand new firm—how laborious might or not it’s?
Good recommendation for beginning an organization is to grasp a buyer downside, after which discover a approach to clear up it utilizing your distinctive capabilities. My cofounders, Damion Shelton and Mikhail Jones, and I didn’t do that. We relied on our perception that this know-how would allow new prospects and trusted ourselves to determine the enterprise as we went. So we merely targeted on constructing our first product: the bipedal robotic Cassie.
Cassie was the primary dynamic bipedal robotic that researchers might purchase, in a position to keep its steadiness by lively, fluid movement somewhat than cautious, inflexible steps. It had ostrichlike legs, not as a result of we had been imitating ground-running birds, however on account of engineering strictly for efficiency. It was not meant to be commercially helpful, and had no torso, arms, or head. We offered Cassie robots to Harvard, Caltech, the College of Michigan, the College of California, Berkeley, and a handful of different analysis establishments, finally saturating the marketplace for US $250,000 bipedal analysis robots after having offered a complete of 10 of them.
ATRIAS, Cassie, and Digit 4 EVT [left to right] are on show at Agility Robotics’ RoboFab in Salem, Ore. The 70,000-square-foot facility has the capability to provide greater than 10,000 Digit 5 robots per 12 months.Agility Robotics
As a result of Cassie’s {hardware} enabled analysis into the physics of strolling and operating, the legged-robot analysis frontier shifted to manage software program. Historically, engineers managed legged robots with detailed mathematical fashions that decided how the machines ought to transfer. With Cassie, researchers pioneered the brand new strategy of reinforcement learning for bipedal legged locomotion: A simulated robotic learns by trial and error, and the ensuing neural community controls the bodily machine. This strategy is what allows just about the entire dynamic behaviors that you simply see on legged robots right this moment, and Cassie seemed alive because it recovered from stumbles whereas climbing stairs, ran 5 kilometers throughout the Oregon State campus, and broke the robot world record for a 100-meter sprint.
Cassie bought us nearer to having the ability to transfer by the world with confidence and style, however to make it helpful, we would have liked manipulation. After exhaustively exploring completely different configurations, we discovered that an upright torso helped the robotic steadiness, whereas two arms mounted close to the highest of the torso allowed it to select up massive objects and to catch itself when it fell. Digit 1, which added a torso and arms to the Cassie legs, was our first mobile manipulation robotic, and one other step on the trail towards a product that might do helpful work for business prospects.
Why Digit Started With Warehouse Bins
As we explored the primary purposes for Digit, potential prospects saved asking us: Why legs? And why a humanoid? These had been robust questions for me to reply, as a result of they uncovered a core enterprise actuality: It didn’t matter to Agility Robotics if we solved a cool science downside in an attractive means. What mattered to the enterprise was fixing actual issues for patrons.
After years of engagement with trade companions, we discovered one reply in warehouses and manufacturing services: shifting bins. Bin dealing with is a clearly outlined activity the place two arms are wanted to raise massive bins up excessive and legs are the easiest way to steadiness and transfer in slim areas. As a result of the duty can differ extensively from one deployment to a different, it hasn’t been broadly addressed by single-purpose automation. But it was constrained sufficient to present Digit an economically viable first job whereas it developed a broader set of abilities.
In 2019, Digit started demonstrating its capabilities to do actual work. With Ford Motor Company, we confirmed how Digit 1 might carry packages from an autonomous car to a entrance porch. We developed Digit 2 and three whereas working with a sure international package deal supply firm on shifting and sorting cardboard containers. Amazon examined Digit 4 on shifting and stacking bins, and it turned the world’s first commercially deployed humanoid at the logistics provider GXO. In 2024, Digit appeared on the quilt of Time journal.
Regardless of Digit’s obvious success, we started to run into conflicts between my dream and the wants of precise prospects. We had been not working with comparatively affected person college analysis labs. Agility has to promote robots to outlive, and prospects will solely buy robots that present worth. If bins weren’t shifting, our prospects had been dropping cash. We spent an enormous quantity of effort and time maintaining our first deployments operational, which arguably eradicated any revenue we made. But this additionally saved our firm studying and alive the best way no lab demo ever might.
I had no concept how laborious it could be, or that operating an organization would contain so many issues that don’t have anything to do with fixing technical issues: deployments throughout the nation; delivery, service, and buyer assist; fundraising and investor relations; extra fundraising; human sources and IT; growing fleet-management software program; managing a provide chain; and much more fundraising. I had no expertise with any of this stuff. My profession had targeted on fixing the technical challenges of robots interacting with the world, and it turned out that was solely a tiny piece of constructing a profitable robotics firm. However Agility was the one path I noticed to persevering with the technical work and having an affect.
Turning Digit Right into a Product
I knew that Agility wanted to focus extra on robots as a product, however I didn’t know the best way to make that occur. Hiring the folks we would have liked to run the corporate meant giving up an immense quantity of management, however we had no different alternative. We recruited a brand new govt staff with the expertise required to commercialize this new know-how, and so they shortly made adjustments that had been each painful and vital.
Digit variations 1, 2, and three [left to right] present the evolution of the robotic from a dynamic strolling platform right into a helpful cell manipulator. Agility
We had meant the subsequent revision of Digit, Digit 4 EVT (Engineering Validation and Take a look at), to be a comparatively minor improve. However Agility’s new management insisted that the robotic was lacking key options that had been important if Digit was going to turn out to be an actual product. So Digit 4 EVT as a substitute integrated a sequence of main adjustments in a extremely compressed timeline, akin to bigger batteries and system-wide upgrades for security and regulatory compliance, which added sufficient mass to dramatically alter the robotic’s look and capabilities.
Whereas early Digits had been headless, Agility Robotics was in a position to justify a head for Digit 4 to optimize antenna and digital camera placement, and it turned out to be surprisingly helpful for human-robot interplay.Christie Hemm Klok
I might solely watch as others introduced their very own abilities to bear to make Digit right into a profitable product, in gut-wrenching ways in which didn’t all the time align with my imaginative and prescient. There have been some particularly troublesome occasions once I felt like there have been compromises made that didn’t appear vital, however making these choices was not my sole accountability. I needed to settle for that Digit had grown far past me, and search for methods of influencing choices somewhat than directing them. Within the second, it was extremely irritating, as Digit 4 EVT took a number of steps backward from my imaginative and prescient of how humanoids ought to look and transfer.
Agility is in our title as a result of agility is core to the way forward for the corporate. I would like Digit to be lithe and sleek. When folks see Digit, I would like them to love the robotic, to grasp what it may possibly do at a look, and to really feel that it’s there to assist. However with Digit 4 EVT, all of that was sacrificed to performance, due to course it needed to be—the client simply wants the robotic to do the work. The design course of turned a ruthless triage, with aesthetics and magnificence of motion being delayed time and again in favor of brutal performance. For an engineer whose thoughts lives extra sooner or later than within the current, it has been laborious for me to simply accept this trajectory. And but, by Digit 4 EVT’s business deployments, we started to essentially perceive particular purposes and what they required. We mapped the primary 10 use circumstances Digit would carry out, after which started designing Digit 5 from scratch primarily based on every thing we had discovered.
Digit 5
Digit 5 will likely be Agility’s first actual step towards a general-purpose robotic. It marks our transition from imagining what a future humanoid robotic needs to be to designing a product across the realities of buyer deployments. These realities embody issues like European CE regulatory compliance, North American UL electrical-safety certifications, and Federal Communications Fee limits for electromagnetic radiation—all of which felt tangential to my dream for Digit, however had been absolute necessities.
Digit 5 is designed to be the primary humanoid robotic that may function safely subsequent to human coworkers whereas working 20 hours a day and lifting greater than a human can.Christie Hemm Klok
Buyer necessities helped us notice that security particularly was some of the essential limitations to scaling. In Digit 4’s business deployments, the robots needed to work behind bodily limitations, separated from people always, to fulfill insurance coverage and regulatory calls for. This appeared foolish to me, as a result of I’ve by no means felt that our robots had been harmful, however we now have to show that they’re secure. And since maintaining the robots in security cages severely restricted their usefulness, enabling Digit 5 to function safely round folks turned a major design objective. We spent two years on this problem.
Digit 5 is designed to be the primary humanoid robotic that may function safely subsequent to human coworkers. It’s going to depend on an array of sensors to find close by folks in a fashion that’s certifiably secure, after which take actions primarily based on that data. As an individual approaches, Digit 5 is programmed to cease what it’s doing, set down its payload, sit on the ground, and reduce energy to its motors earlier than the individual will get shut sufficient to the touch the robotic. This conservative strategy reduces the chance to close by folks in a verifiable means, and we consider it’s the one strategy that is smart as a primary step towards working alongside people.
But this technique additionally appears like a large slowdown on the trail towards robots changing into a part of on a regular basis life. Enabling coexistence with people has influenced virtually each facet of Digit 5’s design: the form of the legs and the physique, the safety-rated sensors inside protecting housings, the remoted computer systems devoted to security, and extra. All of those options enhance the robotic’s complexity, energy consumption, mass, and bodily measurement.
Digit 5 is Agility’s largest, heaviest, strongest, and most succesful humanoid robotic employee.
The robotic’s design was pushed by security, with built-in safety for the robotic and for the people it should work round.Agility Robotics
Weighing over 120 kg, Digit 5 is a large robotic. It wanted to realize the lifting limits really helpful beneath the U.S. Nationwide Institute for Occupational Security and Well being tips for human staff, which embody repeatedly lifting 23-kg bins and reaching cabinets 1.75 meters excessive. Digit is designed to carry out duties like these for 20 hours a day—one thing no human can do. This requires motors with sufficient energy and torque to raise the load, but additionally sufficient precision to delicately management the pressure Digit applies when it makes contact with the world. To energy these motors, we would have liked a big battery and a dock for speedy autonomous charging. The dock will ship 240 amperes at 48 volts, which is sufficient present to make its thick charging cables visibly wiggle beneath the induced magnetic forces, whereas highly effective followers blow air by cooling channels within the robotic’s torso to maintain the battery from overheating. The battery and cooling system takes up about 75 % of Digit’s torso, however it should permit the robotic to function for 90 minutes and absolutely recharge throughout a 9-minute break, enabling near-continuous work.
All of this additional bulk implies that Digit 5 can not run or leap the best way earlier generations might, and the svelte kind I imagined has turn out to be bodily not possible. In some methods, Digit 5 feels extra like a forklift than the sleek humanoid I got down to construct. However trying on the scenario rationally, I consider this trade-off is critical for any firm that claims its humanoid can do this sort of work right this moment: In case you see a robotic that appears like a human working in a manufacturing facility or warehouse, it both can’t raise the required weight or can’t make it by the entire shift. And if it’s not coated with sensors, it’s probably not secure to face subsequent to.
Essentially the most seen change with Digit 5 is that humanlike legs change the ostrichlike legs of our earlier variations. Whereas the “backward” leg configuration was optimized for walking and running, we found that it created problems with squatting as a result of the ankle will strike the bottom. Digit 5 will spend a number of time lifting heavy objects from close to the ground, so we used a humanoid leg configuration with knee and hip motors that each contribute torque to assist the robotic rise up once more.
When Digit detects an approaching human, the robotic will decrease itself to the ground and reduce energy to its motors. Agility believes that is the one near-term strategy to verifiably scale back danger when the robotic is working close to folks.Agility Robotics
Different corporations constructing humanoid robots have copied the human kind with out ever understanding its goal. It’s very irritating that, to an outdoor observer, it now appears to be like like we discarded Agility’s distinctive leg design and easily did what everybody else was doing. But I do know that we arrived at this form primarily based purely on purposeful engineering decisions. Making a robotic appear to be a human is the simple half—with out the operate to match, and the understanding of the physics underlying that operate, the entire level of the human kind could also be misplaced.
With the facility, battery life, and security options that we’re designing into Digit 5, we could have a really helpful robotic. But it surely additionally compromises on some issues which are core to my imaginative and prescient and mission. I perceive why we made the alternatives we did and may justify all of them, however collectively they go away me unhappy. It’s the curse of the engineer.
What Comes After Digit 5
I consider Digit 5 would be the scaling second for Agility Robotics, the inflection level the place we will start deploying robots in massive numbers. Whereas the robotic will proceed carrying bins, our street map contains many extra duties, from selecting particular person objects and tending machines, to getting ready components for meeting and delivery, and ultimately doing meeting work itself. Its interchangeable device interfaces and modular design will allow us to progressively improve its subsystems. It will likely be a platform for enchancment, a supply of information for future conduct coaching, and a viable product all on the similar time.
Hurst stands between the earlier model of Digit, Digit 4 EVT [left], and Digit 5.Christie Hemm Klok
However I can’t love Digit 5. It’s the biggest, heaviest, most expensive robotic Agility will ever construct, filled with design compromises that allow it to be precisely the robotic it must be proper now somewhat than the robotic I dreamed of. To start with, I envisioned regular progress on agility and dexterity, with every model changing into extra dynamically succesful. As a substitute, growing Digit 5 has required massive detours to include necessities that appeared unrelated to my unique imaginative and prescient. Nevertheless, I now acknowledge that tackling these challenges was all the time vital. Clients and product necessities didn’t wreck my imaginative and prescient; they revealed what my imaginative and prescient was lacking. That is how robots will obtain business success and make a real-world affect, which can deliver me nearer to my scientific dream as properly.
We received’t have a humanoid that matches the capabilities of people till it achieves that mastery of movement that impressed me to discovered Agility over a decade in the past. I noticed glimmers of it with the spring-mass locomotion of ATRIAS, and extra glimmers with Cassie’s operating gait.
I do know that such mastery is bodily doable with the instruments and {hardware} that we now have proper now, and regardless of all of its compromises, Digit 5 will give us a sensible basis for pursuing that dream. I would like each future model of Digit to be lighter and extra sleek, to work together extra naturally with people, and to be higher at manipulating objects and shifting by the world, enabling robots to enter points of our lives that they haven’t been in a position to assist with earlier than. By the point I’m sufficiently old to want help at dwelling, I anticipate Digit will likely be as much as the duty.
With Digit 5, Agility has constructed a robotic that will likely be helpful in our world. Now I’m getting again to work to make it stunning, too.
This text seems within the November 2026 print problem.
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