Insider Brief
- Agility Robotics unveiled Digit 5 with higher payload, faster charging, expanded safety features and plans to make the humanoid commercially available outside North America for the first time, starting with the EU and UK in 2027.
- Digit 5 can repeatedly lift up to 50 pounds, recharge in nine minutes and uses human detection, safety cues and independent motion control to reduce reliance on physical barriers around industrial robots.
- Agility outlines illustrative pricing of $8,500 a month under a robots-as-a-service model or about $200,000 for an upfront purchase.
Agility Robotics has introduced Digit 5, the latest version of its humanoid robot with plans to also expand availability to Europe for the first time. According to the company, the new model brings with it a higher payload, faster charging and new safety features designed to let it work more closely with people in factories and warehouses.
Early access is expected to begin in the first half of next year, followed by general availability by the end of the 2027. Agility indicated it also plans to make Digit commercially available outside North America for the first time, starting with the EU and UK.
The company said the new robot is designed to handle a wider range of work while reducing the need for physical safety barriers around robotic work areas.
Built to Work Closer to People
Agility reported it has redesigned Digit’s safety architecture to let the robot operate closer to people without relying as heavily on the physical barriers commonly used around industrial automation. The company said the system builds on an earlier independent field evaluation in which Digit became the first humanoid to be assessed on a customer production line against industrial safety standards administered by OSHA.
“Digit 5 is removing a major barrier to scaling humanoid robots in industrial environments,” CEO Peggy Johnson, CEO noted in the announcement. “We built it to the exact requirements our customers gave us after three years of Digit 4 working on their production floors.”
Digit 5 adds three main safety features:
Human detection: Multiple sensors and AI software continuously monitor for nearby people and can make the robot avoid them, stop or move into a seated position.
Safety cues: Visual and audible signals indicate what the robot intends to do and alert nearby workers.
Independent motion control: A separate safety controller monitors distance from people and can trigger protective responses when someone gets too close.
Agility is also working with Nvidia on the system and is the first launch partner for Nvidia’s Halos for Robotics platform, combining its safety architecture with Nvidia IGX Thor and Halos Core infrastructure.
Digit 5 Specs
Agility said the main hardware changes include:
- Payload: Repeated lifting of up to 50 pounds, about 40% more than Digit 4.
- Runtime: About 90 minutes per charge.
- Charging: Nine minutes, giving the robot a 10-to-1 run-to-charge ratio compared with 2-to-1 for Digit 4.
- End effectors: Swappable grippers using ISO-standard mounting flanges.
- Size: 5 feet 11 inches tall and 284 pounds.
- Reach: Up to 7.2 feet, compared with 5.5 feet for the previous version.
The company noted the charging improvements could allow Digit 5 to perform more than 20 hours of productive work during a 24-hour period. Digit 4’s charge time is between 1-2 hours with about 4 hours runtime.
Digit 5 Designed for End-to-End Work
While Digit 4 has primarily been deployed for tote-based material handling, Agility expects Digit 5 will do more, from depalletizing incoming goods and tending machines to kitting, sequencing and quality inspection, to palletizing finished goods for shipment. In that way, a single robot can perform different jobs as materials move through a facility rather than require a dedicated robotic system at each stage.
Agility pointed out that Digit 5 can also coordinate those handoffs with existing autonomous mobile robots, conveyors and warehouse equipment through its Arc management platform. Arc connects with warehouse and manufacturing software and tracks operating measures such as uptime, throughput and time between incidents, allowing Digit to fit into existing material flows rather than operate as a standalone system.
Digit is assembled at Agility’s RoboFab facility in Salem, Ore., which the company said is designed for annual production capacity of up to 10,000 robots. Agility also operates engineering and skills-development facilities in Pittsburgh and opened a Fremont, Calif., hardware and physical AI development center in July.
Costs
Agility’s Sept. 4 S-4 filing outlines two potential pricing models for Digit 5, while cautioning that the figures are illustrative and that final customer contracts could differ.
Under a robots-as-a-service model, customers would pay about $8,500 a month per robot, or roughly $102,000 a year, plus a one-time deployment fee of about $25,000. Agility assumes a five-year useful life for the robot. The subscription would include software and maintenance services.
For customers that buy Digit 5 outright, Agility assumes an upfront hardware price of about $200,000, plus a $20,000 deployment fee and about $36,000 a year for Arc software and maintenance. Over five years, that would put the illustrative customer cost at about $400,000 before any other expenses.
Agility expects each Digit 5 to cost about $150,000 to build at commercial launch, but is targeting sharply lower manufacturing costs as production scales. The company estimates its bill of materials could fall to about $75,000 per robot at 1,000 units of annual production and about $30,000 at 10,000 units a year.
Agility also estimates annual software and maintenance delivery costs of about $15,000 per deployed robot, along with a one-time internal deployment cost of about $15,000 per unit. The company said the assumptions are intended to illustrate potential unit economics and do not guarantee that it will achieve those prices or margins with customers.
Digit 4’s Performance
Digit 5 builds on nearly three years of commercial deployments of Digit 4, which Agility said has accumulated more than 65,000 operating hours at customer sites including GXO, Schaeffler, Amazon and Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada. At GXO’s Flowery Branch, Ga., facility, Digit 4 has handled more than 100,000 totes while maintaining roughly 98% accuracy when performing its assigned task, according to Agility.
The company said it had more than $300 million in multi-year orders for Digit 5 as of May, provided certain agreed-upon conditions are met.
Agility added that Digit 5 is expected to receive regulatory approvals needed for commercial deployment in the European Union, Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Featured image credit: Agility Robotics
