On 15 September 2026, Agility Robotics unveiled Digit 5, its first humanoid engineered for cooperatively safe work at scale: close proximity to people without the physical safety barriers traditional automation usually requires, per the company announcement.
The diligence hook is not another walking reel. Digit 4 already logged more than 65,000 hours across customer sites including GXO, Schaeffler, Amazon, and Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada, and at GXO Flowery Branch hit a cumulative 100,000-tote milestone at about 98% on-task accuracy (Agility). As of May 2026, Agility cites more than $300 million in multi-year Digit 5 orders subject to contractual milestones (Agility).
Inside Deep Tech put those marks in the Physical AI Market Report: October 2026 alongside IFR's five-million industrial stock and Figure's Helix 2.5 results. This full guide is the Digit deep dive: hardware, safety architecture, fleet software, capacity, orders, timelines, and honest limits. For the older company overview, see the Agility Robotics review (July 2026, before Digit 5).
Key Takeaways
- Digit 5 (15 Sep 2026) targets cage-light cooperative work with AI human detection, safety cues, and an independent safety controller (Agility).
- Digit 4 logged >65,000 operating hours; GXO reached 100,000 totes at ~98% on-task accuracy (Agility).
- Hardware: up to 50 lb (22.7 kg) repeated lifts, 90-minute battery / 9-minute charge (10:1 run-to-charge), 5'11" / 284 lb, reach to 7.2 ft (Agility).
- Orders: >$300M multi-year Digit 5 orders as of May 2026, milestone-conditioned; early access H1 2027, GA end-2027 (Agility).
- RoboFab (Salem, OR) is designed for up to 10,000 Digit/year; Agility is first launch partner for NVIDIA Halos on IGX Thor (Agility).
What Digit 5 is (and is not)
Digit is Agility's general-purpose bipedal humanoid for industrial material handling and facility workflows. Digit 5 is the generation built after nearly three years of Digit 4 commercial deployment, per Agility. It is Made for Work branding, not a home companion demo.
What it is not: a drop-in replacement for the classical industrial robot stock IFR just put at 5.079 million units (IFR press; see also Inside Deep Tech's Physical AI Market Report: October 2026). Digit competes for tote moves, machine tending, kitting, and related workflows that still use people and AMRs today. For AMR context, see the AMR explainer.
The operating-hours edge
Here's the problem with most humanoid diligence: demos do not equal time-on-task. Agility's stated edge is tenure. Digit has the longest tenure among humanoid robots actively working in industrial facilities, with nearly three years of continuous commercial deployment, per Agility.
| Evidence mark | Figure | Date / note | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Digit 4 operating hours | >65,000 | Cited 15 Sep 2026 | Agility PR |
| Named customers | GXO, Schaeffler, Amazon, Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada | North America sites | Agility PR |
| GXO Flowery Branch totes | 100,000 cumulative | ~98% on-task accuracy | Agility PR |
| Digit 5 unveil | 15 Sep 2026 | Cooperative safety architecture | Agility PR |
| Digit 5 orders | >$300M multi-year | As of May 2026; milestones | Agility PR |
| Early access | H1 2027 | GA by end of 2027 | Agility PR |
Source: Agility Digit 5 announcement. Inside Deep Tech's October Physical AI report uses the same primary marks in its humanoid comparison table.
Cooperative safety architecture
Safety has been one of the biggest obstacles to scaling humanoids in commercial settings, per Agility. Digit 5's architecture is designed to reduce dependence on protective barriers. Agility says Digit was the first humanoid to pass an independent field evaluation on a customer production line for industrial safety standards administered by OSHA, and Digit 5 adds:
- Safe human detection: proprietary AI plus multiple sensors to avoid, stop, or sit when people are present (Agility).
- Safety cues: visual and auditory intent signals for nearby people (Agility).
- Safe motion control: an independent safety controller that triggers responses when people enter an unsafe distance (Agility).
Agility is the first launch partner for NVIDIA's Halos for Robotics platform on IGX Thor and Halos Core, per the same announcement. NVIDIA's Deepu Talla is quoted tying safe operation around people and assets to the move from pilots to industrial scale. For platform context, see NVIDIA's robotics platform primer.
Agility also cites standards work: project leader/contributor roles on ANSI/A3 TR R15.108 (dynamically stable industrial mobile robots including humanoids in the US and Canada) and ISO 25785-1 (first international humanoid safety standard), per Agility.
Hardware upgrades that change the job list
Digit 5's hardware list is the customer-feedback layer after three years of Digit 4 on production floors (Agility):
| Spec | Digit 5 mark | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Repeated payload | Up to 50 lb / 22.7 kg | Single-person lift coverage in OSHA-regulated facilities (Agility) |
| Battery / charge | 90 min run, 9 min charge (10:1) | Up from Digit 4's 2:1; >20 hours productive work / 24h day (Agility) |
| Height / weight | 5'11" (1.81 m) / 284 lb (129 kg) | Human-scale aisles and doors (Agility) |
| Reach | Up to 7.2 ft / 2.2 m | Up from Digit 4's 5.5 ft (Agility) |
| End effectors | Swappable; ISO-standard flanges | Tote handling to machine tending (Agility) |
| Actuation note | Proprietary cycloidal actuators | Legs engineered for repetitive lifting (Agility) |
Source: Agility Digit 5 announcement.
Together, Agility says these upgrades let a single Digit 5 cover a fuller facility workflow: depalletizing inbound goods, machine tending, kitting and sequencing, quality inspection, and outbound palletizing, coordinated with existing AMRs, conveyors, and warehouse systems through Agility's management platform (Agility).
Agility Arc and data handling
Digit 5 stays integrated with Agility Arc, the cloud platform for deploying and managing Digit fleets. Arc exposes fleet KPIs such as uptime, throughput, and Mean Time Between Incidents, and connects with WMS, WES, and MES systems, per Agility.
On privacy: Agility states end-to-end encryption, strict access controls, and localized data processing. Onboard cameras, depth sensors, and IMUs process sensory data locally; transmitted health/diagnostic data uses mTLS and TLS 1.2+ to a private CA, with on-robot storage encrypted at rest (Agility).
Capacity, geography, and the 2027 calendar
Digit is assembled at RoboFab in Salem, Oregon: a 70,000-square-foot factory purpose-built for humanoid assembly, designed for up to 10,000 Digit robots per year and more than 500 employees at full capacity (Agility). Engineering validation sits in Pittsburgh; a Fremont, California facility opened in July 2026 as the hardware and physical AI development hub (Agility.
For the first time, Agility plans commercial Digit deployment outside North America, starting with the EU and UK, with Digit 5 expected to carry a CE mark and related marks (Agility). Early access is guided for the first half of 2027; general availability for manufacturing, warehouse, and distribution operators by the end of 2027 (Agility.
Orders, RaaS, and what '\$300 million' does and does not mean
As of May 2026, Agility had more than $300 million in multi-year customer orders for Digit 5 subject to satisfaction of certain contractual milestones, plus a sales pipeline across manufacturing, warehousing, and logistics (Agility.
Inside Deep Tech's take: conditional multi-year orders are stronger than a pilot LOI and weaker than recognized revenue. Read them next to operating hours and tote counts, not instead of them. For how robotics-as-a-service contracts are usually structured, see the RaaS guide. Secondary coverage of customer concentration in SPAC filings is diligence context, not a substitute for Agility's primary wording that milestones apply.
How Digit compares in the October Physical AI stack
The October Physical AI Market Report ranks Digit on operating evidence, Figure on model/compute marks, Boston Dynamics on factory calendars, and Unitree on audited industrial mix. Cross-links: Figure deep dive, Boston Dynamics Atlas, Unitree filing, robot foundation models.
Against the classical base, IFR's 603,307 installs and 5.079 million stock (IFR; IFR guide) remain the attach surface most Physical AI software still has to respect.
Honest limits
- Operating hours and tote counts are company-published, not third-party audited utilization studies (Agility).
- The >$300M Digit 5 orders are milestone-conditioned as of May 2026 (Agility).
- Digit 5 early access is H1 2027 guidance; GA is end-2027 guidance (Agility).
- RoboFab's 10,000/year figure is design capacity, not 2026 output (Agility).
- OSHA field-evaluation language is Agility's claim about Digit; operators still need site-specific risk assessments.
- This guide does not invent unit economics, cost per tote, or payback periods Agility did not publish in the Digit 5 PR.
Inside Deep Tech's take
Inside Deep Tech's take: Digit 5 is the clearest public attempt to turn humanoid robotics from barrier-walled pilots into cooperative industrial labor. The evidence that matters is the Digit 4 clock (>65,000 hours), the GXO tote milestone, and a safety architecture aimed at removing cages. The evidence that still sits ahead is Digit 5 early-access performance in H1 2027 and whether milestone-conditioned orders convert.
The team at Inside Deep Tech will keep weighting time-on-task over keynote gait cycles.
Frequently asked questions
What is Agility Digit 5?
Digit 5 is Agility Robotics' next-generation bipedal humanoid, unveiled 15 September 2026, designed for cooperatively safe industrial work without traditional safety cages. Source: Agility announcement.
How is Digit 5 different from Digit 4?
Digit 5 adds a cooperative safety architecture, higher repeated payload (up to 50 lb), a 10:1 run-to-charge battery system, greater reach, and swappable end effectors, built on Digit 4's >65,000 operating hours. Source: Agility.
When can customers get Digit 5?
Early access is guided for the first half of 2027, with general availability by the end of 2027, including planned EU/UK commercial access with CE marking. Source: Agility.
What does the $300 million order figure mean?
As of May 2026, Agility cites more than $300 million in multi-year Digit 5 orders subject to contractual milestones. That is conditional backlog, not audited deliveries. Source: Agility.
Where is Digit built?
At RoboFab in Salem, Oregon, a 70,000-square-foot facility designed for up to 10,000 Digit robots per year. Source: Agility.
How does Digit relate to NVIDIA Halos?
Agility is the first launch partner for NVIDIA's Halos for Robotics platform on IGX Thor and Halos Core, pairing Digit 5's safety architecture with that stack. Source: Agility.
Where does Digit fit in Inside Deep Tech's Physical AI coverage?
Digit 5 is a named mover in the October 2026 Physical AI Market Report. Company background sits in the Agility review. Industrial census context is in the Physical AI Market Report: October 2026.
What to do next
If you are evaluating humanoids for 2027 warehouse or factory workflows, ask for site-level Digit 4 KPIs that survive outside a press page, map Digit 5's cooperative safety claims to your own OSHA/CE risk file, and treat milestone-conditioned orders as a diligence checklist item, not a closed booking.
Then read Digit against the rest of the October stack: IFR's industrial floor, Figure's model marks, and Boston Dynamics' factory calendar in the Physical AI Market Report: October 2026.
