Next-gen US humanoid designed for safety will be sold in the UK and EU
22 September 2026 
The US humanoid robotics and physical AI company, Agility Robotics, has unveiled a next-generation humanoid robot designed specifically to work close to people without the safety barriers needed for traditional automation technologies. For the first time, Agility plans to make the new Digit 5 humanoid available outside North America, starting with the European Union and the UK.
Based on more than 65,000 hours of operation and commercial deployments of the previous Digit 4 generation, the robot will be able to take on a variety of industrial tasks including palletising, machine tending, kitting, sequencing and quality inspection. It will be capable of handling 40% higher payloads, have a taller reach, and be able to recharge its battery quicker for longer operating times.
Agility says that safety has been one of the biggest obstacles to scaling humanoid robots in commercial settings. The safety architecture of the new humanoid incorporates:
- Safe human detection using proprietary AI algorithms and multiple sensors to monitor for the presence of people and take appropriate action by autonomously avoiding, stopping or sitting down.
- Visual and auditory safety cues to convey motion intent and to alert people nearby.
- An independent safety controller that oversees the robot’s response to the detection of people at an unsafe distance, and triggers the appropriate responses “instantly”.
“Digit 5 is removing a major barrier to scaling humanoid robots in industrial environments,” says Agility Robotics’ CEO, Peggy Johnson. “We built it to the exact requirements our customers gave us after three years of Digit 4 working on their production floors. The market has responded with more than $300m in multi-year orders and a growing pipeline of customers across manufacturing, warehousing and logistics. That’s value that compounds as Digit’s capabilities expand, backed by real demand.”
Digit 5 is the first humanoid to incorporate Nvidia’s recently launched Halos for Robotics platform, pairing 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,” says Deepu Talla, Nvidia’s vice-president of robotics and edge AI. “Agility’s Digit 5 is building on more than 65,000 hours of real-world operation and pairing its new safety architecture developed on top of Nvidia IGX Thor and Halos safety framework for Robotics to help humanoids collaborate safely in factories and warehouses.”
Agility is also helping shape the standards that will govern safe robotics, as a project leader and contributor to the American National Standards Institute’s ANSI/A3 TR R15.108 – a technical report being developed for dynamically stable industrial mobile robots, including humanoids, in the US and Canada, and to the International Organisation for Standardisation’s ISO 25785-1 – the first international safety standard for humanoids.
Agility’s new humanoid has been developed in response to three years of customer feedback from its earlier Digit 4 machine, and incorporates hardware upgrades including:
- 40% higher payloads A new leg design, powered by a proprietary cycloidal actuator technology, withstands repetitive lifting and lets Digit 5 lift loads up to 22.7kg loads repeatedly, allowing it to perform single-person lift tasks in facilities regulated by OSHA (the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration).
- Faster autonomous charging for extended working times A 90-minute runtime battery charges in 9 minutes, allowing more than 20 hours of productive work in a 24-hour day.
- Swappable end-effectors A swappable gripper design with ISO mounting flanges allows Digit’s tools to be changed, enabling greater productivity while tackling tasks ranging from tote handling to machine tending.
- Higher reach with a human-scale footprint Digit 5 weighs 129kg, stands 1.81m tall, and can achieve heights of up to 2.2m to reach the same shelves and move through the same aisles, doorways and workstations as people.
Together these upgrades are said to enable a Digit 5 robot to take on work that used to require specialised approaches at each stage, and to remove constraints on scale.
Since its first commercial deployments, the Digit 4 humanoid has largely focused on automating tote-based material-handling applications. Digit 5 will take advantage of Agility’s proprietary approach to physical AI-based training to add more skills and expand to handle full workflows from depalletising goods as they arrive, to machine tending, kitting and sequencing, quality inspection, and finally palletising for shipment.
Using Agility’s management platform, the robot coordinates handoffs with a facility’s existing AMRs, conveyors and warehouse systems, so material keeps moving between stations. Agility is continuing to build its physical AI stack, allowing engineers to develop new behaviours for Digit 5 for each new workflow.
Agility claims that Digit has the longest tenure among humanoid robots working in industrial facilities, with nearly three years of commercial deployment. The Digit 4 model has logged more than 65,000 hours of operation with customers in North America, including GXO, Schaeffler, Amazon and Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada.
At a GXO facility near Atlanta, Digit 4 has handled 100,000 totes, maintaining a claimed accuracy of around 98%.
As of May 2026, Agility says it had more than $300m in multi-year customer orders for Digit 5, subject to certain contractual milestones being satisfied. The company adds that it has a sales pipeline of prospective customers in manufacturing, warehousing and logistics, reflecting an accelerating demand as customers move from pilot programmes to full-scale deployment.
Digit 5 will integrate with Agility Arc, Agility’s cloud platform for deploying and managing fleets. The platform gives visibility into fleet KPIs such as uptime, throughput and MTBI (mean time between incidents), and connects with existing manufacturing execution, and warehouse management and execution, systems.
The Digit platform is protected by end-to-end encryption, strict access controls and localised data processing. It uses onboard cameras, depth sensors and inertial measurement devices to navigate and operate safely, processing sensor data locally and transmitting essential system health and diagnostic information to Agility Arc. The transmitted data is encrypted, segregated by customer, and secured using mTLS and TLS 1.2+ rooted to a private certificate authority, while on-robot storage is encrypted for data at rest.
Agility is assembling the new humanoid at its 70,000ft2 (6,500m2) RoboFab facility in Salem, Oregon. At full capacity, the site is designed to produce up to 10,000 Digit robots per year, and to employ more than 500 people.
Early access to Digit 5 is expected to start in the first half of 2027, with general availability expected by the end of the year.
In addition to the US and Canada, for the first time, Agility plans to make its humanoid robots available for commercial deployment outside North America, starting with the European Union and UK. It expects Digit 5 to carry a CE mark and additional regulatory marks for the EU, Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
