Agility Robotics has taken the wraps off Digit 5, the next generation of its warehouse humanoid robot and the first the company says is engineered for “cooperatively safe” work at scale. This means it is designed to share a floor with people rather than sit behind the fencing that has defined industrial robots for decades.

Beyond the United States and Canada, Agility plans to make Digit available for commercial deployment internationally, starting with the European Union and United Kingdom (sadly no mention of Australia at this stage).

Digit 5 is expected to carry a CE mark and additional regulatory marks to enable market access to the EU, Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Early access to Digit 5 is expected to begin in the first half of 2027, with general availability for manufacturing, warehouse and distribution operators expected by the end of 2027.

Digit is assembled at RoboFab, Agility’s 70,000-square-foot facility in Salem, Oregon. Agility’s Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania office leads engineering testing, validation and skills development, and its new Fremont, California facility, opened in July 2026, serves as the company’s hardware and physical AI development hub.

Out of the workcell

Safety is often the bottleneck humanoids need to resolve before scaling. Agility is trying to break that mould. Traditional arms sit in cages for a reason.

Agility Robot’s pitch is a dedicated safety stack for Digit 5: a proprietary AI brain and multiple sensors watch for people; the robot can move around them, stop, or sit down; visual and audio cues advertise what it is about to do; and a separate safety controller fires those responses if someone gets too close.

Agility is also the first launch partner for NVIDIA’s Halos for Robotics platform, pairing Digit 5 with NVIDIA IGX Thor and Halos Core. Deepu Talla, NVIDIA’s vice president of robotics and edge AI, said safely operating around people is what moves humanoids from pilots to industrial deployments.

Agility is also helping write the rules, contributing to ANSI/A3 TR R15.108 in North America and ISO 25785-1, the first international safety standard aimed at the humanoid category.

Heavier, taller, and on the dock less often

The hardware jump between version 4 and 5 is substantial.

40% more payload
A new leg design engineered to withstand repetitive lifting, powered by proprietary cycloidal actuator technology, lets Digit 5 repeatedly lift up to 50 lb. (22.7 kg) loads, allowing full coverage of single-person lift tasks in OSHA-regulated facilities.

Faster autonomous charging for more time working
A new 90-minute runtime battery system charges in just 9 minutes, giving Digit 5 a 10:1 run-to-charge ratio (up from Digit 4’s 2:1), enabling more than 20 hours of productive work in a 24-hour day.

Swappable end-effectors
A swappable gripper design with ISO-standard mounting flanges allows Digit’s tools to be changed for the job at hand, enabling greater productivity while tackling tasks ranging from tote handling to machine tending.

Higher reach with a human-scale footprint
Digit 5 weighs 284 lb. (129 kg), stands 5’ 11” (1.81 m), and can reach heights of up to 7.2 feet (2.2 m) (up from Digit 4’s 5.5 ft), sized to reach the same shelves and move through the same aisles, doorways and workstations built for people.

Agility wants a single Digit 5 to cover more of a facility: depalletising inbound goods, machine tending, kitting and sequencing, quality inspection, then palletising outbound. Agility Arc, the cloud fleet platform, is still the glue to WMS, WES, MES and existing AMRs and conveyors.

Why it matters here

Australian warehouses and factories have the same labour and three-shift utilisation problem Agility is selling into. A humanoid that can use existing aisles, lift a 23 kg payload, and theoretically cover more than 20 hours in a day is a more interesting commercial object than another parked-in-a-cage arm – if the safety story holds up outside a press rendering.

Digit 5 still has to ship, certify, and do the work at volume and the competition is coming with some fierce competition coming from the likes of Boston Dynamics, Tesla and various Chinese robots.