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Agility unveils Digit 5, a safety-conscious humanoid
The robot maker says its latest humanoid is designed to work alongside people, but analysts warn that industrywide safety standards remain underdeveloped.
Agility Robotics unveiled Digit 5, a new version of its humanoid robot designed to safely work alongside people in industrial environments at scale.
The U.S. robotics maker said it developed its latest model following three years of commercial deployments of its predecessor, Digit 4, which accumulated more than 65,000 hours of operational time across customer sites.
The new model, released on Tuesday, can repeatedly lift loads of up to 50 pounds. It's fitted with a swappable gripper system that lets different end-effectors be used for various tasks, including tote handling and machine tending.
The launch comes as humanoids increasingly move from labs to real-world deployments, with developers paying closer attention to human-robot interactions and safety standards.
Agility, which said safety remains "one of the biggest obstacles to scaling humanoid robots" commercially designed Digit 5 to address these concerns. The new model has a range of systems to detect people, communicate motion intent and adapt behavior to potential dangers.
"Safety is a real bottleneck, and Digit 5 is the clearest industrial attempt to address this challenge," said Lian Jye Su, analyst at Omdia, a division of Informa TechTarget. "Digit 5 will likely be deployed in well-defined commercial and industrial use cases with clear safety and security parameters before it rolls out to more consumer or home use cases."
Yet, while designs such as Agility's show increased integration of safety into robotic design from the ground up, Su said the industry still relies heavily on individual vendors' safety frameworks. Total trust in humanoids will require industry-wide standardization.
"While hardware is relatively mature, humanoid robotic AI model safety and security require more robust verification frameworks," he said. "As with AI safety, vendors and enterprises need clear practices for auditing, logging, testing and governance of humanoid software. Safety policies and guardrails are also lacking."
Humanoid safety presents new challenges
Traditional industrial robots typically operate within relatively constrained environments, with their movements and tasks tightly defined. Yet the rise of general-purpose humanoids means these models are expected to start operating in more unstructured, dynamic environments. This change will introduce new safety considerations.
"The industry will need a more robust approach to humanoid robotics safety, including dynamic balance, fall envelopes, unstructured human motion and AI behavior," Su said. "It will involve a combination of vendor certification, industry-standard formulation, AI model safety and security testing, and robust filters and guardrails."
Agility is contributing to the development of standards for dynamically stable industrial mobile robots, including humanoids, as part of the American National Standards Institute's ANSI/A3 TR R15.108 technical report. It's also contributing to ISO 25785-1, which is being developed as an international safety standard for humanoids.
The company said Digit's safety architecture, including its human-detection systems and motion intent communication, is intended to reduce the need for protective physical barriers and enable robots to operate in closer proximity to human workers.
Agility is also partnering with AI giant Nvidia on the safety architecture, becoming the first launch partner for Nvidia's Halos for Robotics platform. Digit 5 combines Agility's systems with Nvidia's IGX Thor and Halos Core infrastructure.
"Safely operating around people and assets is what moves humanoid robots from pilots to industrial deployments at scale," Deepu Talla, Nvidia's vice president of robotics and edge AI, said in a statement.
Agility said it expects early access to Digit 5 to begin in the first half of 2027, with general availability for manufacturing, warehouse and distribution operators expected by the end of 2027.
Scarlett Evans is a freelance writer with a focus on emerging technologies and the minerals industry. Previously, she served as assistant editor at IoT World Today, where she specialized in robotics and smart city technologies. Scarlett also has a background in the mining and resources sector, with experience at Mine Australia, Mine Technology and Power Technology.
