Agility Robotics to Deploy Digit Humanoids at Toyota

- The agreement follows a year-long pilot program at Toyota's Woodstock, Ontario facility, which initially involved three Digit robots before the decision was made to deploy seven units starting in April. This plant is Toyota's largest manufacturing operation outside of Japan and produces the RAV4 and RAV4 Hybrid models. - Agility's Digit is a 5' 9" (175 cm) tall humanoid robot that can carry payloads up to 35 lbs (16 kg). It navigates using LiDAR and four Intel RealSense depth cameras and is designed to work in spaces created for humans, tackling tasks like tote handling to reduce repetitive strain on employees. - The Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS) model allows Toyota to lease the robots and access Agility's cloud-based fleet management platform, Agility Arc, for task assignment and monitoring. This converts a capital expenditure into an operating expense, lowering the barrier to adoption and ensuring access to the latest hardware through upgrades. - Agility Robotics, founded in 2015, is led by CEO Peggy Johnson, formerly of Microsoft and Magic Leap. The leadership team also includes CTO Pras Velagapudi, who previously led mobile robotics at Berkshire Grey, and CPO Melonee Wise, who was the CEO of Fetch Robotics. - The company has raised approximately $180 million in funding from investors including Amazon's Industrial Innovation Fund, DCVC, and Playground Global. Agility is scaling production at its RoboFab facility in Oregon, which has a target capacity of over 10,000 robots per year. - This deployment is part of a broader trend of automotive companies adopting humanoid robots. BMW is testing Figure AI's 02 robot, Mercedes-Benz is working with Apptronik's Apollo, and Hyundai plans to deploy Boston Dynamics' Atlas robots in its factories. - Toyota has a long history of developing its own robotics for manufacturing, dating back to the 1970s, based on its "Jidoka" principle of automation with a human touch. This deal with a third-party humanoid robotics company marks a strategic shift for the automotive giant. - The humanoid robot market was valued at $2.9 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow to $15.3 billion by 2030. The automotive sector is expected to be a major driver of this growth, with one forecast predicting the deployment of 1.6 million humanoid robots in the industry by 2035.