AIBRIEF
Agility Robotics' new workplace biped defaults to sitting when a human approaches. The 65,000 hour safety record and $300M in orders are the company's own claims.
Agility Robotics unveiled Digit 5 on September 15 in Salem, Oregon, billing the biped as its first humanoid built for "cooperatively safe work at scale" — industrial floors where robots and people share space without cages.
CTO Pras Velagapudi said Digit 5 uses a "complex safe motion system" with proprietary AI and sensors to scan for humans, then pick a mitigation: step aside, stop in place, or squat to a seated position depending on proximity and posture. Ars Technica calls the crouch the visual hook; Agility's pitch is that the robot's idle state, not its detection reaction, is the safety mechanism.
Specs: 90-minute battery, 50-pound lift, 7.2-foot reach. First customer shipments are slated for the first half of 2027. Agility says it has booked more than $300 million in multi-year orders and cites 65,000 hours of prior Digit operation. Both numbers are the company's own. The "OSHA-recognized" line on the prior Digit was, per Gizmodo, a company-touted safety inspection, not an OSHA certification.
Agility announced a $2.5 billion SPAC merger in June. Whether crouching counts as a safe coworker on an OSHA-regulated floor is the question the company now has to answer outside the demo room.