Agility Digit
History’s first humanoid with an actual job.
Why this verdict · Updated July 2026
We rate it REAL and working. The proof isn’t a video but a contract: GXO Logistics signed the industry’s first multi-year humanoid-as-a-service agreement in 2024, after a 2023 pilot, and Digit has since been moving totes from cobots to conveyors, orchestrated by Agility’s Arc software. The Robot Report recognized it as the first humanoid in a commercial application. The honest nuance: its autonomy is real but bounded to repetitive warehouse tasks; nobody asks it for conversation or parkour, and that modesty is exactly what got it the job.
What it does well
- History’s first commercially deployed humanoid, on a multi-year contract
- Real autonomy on its task: no operator in the loop during the shift
- RaaS model: paid as a service, just like AMRs
- Designed for the warehouse, not the stage
What it doesn’t
- Not sold to individuals: deployments with industrial partners
- Narrow task repertoire compared to the humanoid promise
- Slower than a specialized AMR at the same transport job
- No public price
Specifications
| Maker | Agility Robotics (Oregon, US) |
|---|---|
| Height & weight | 1.75 m · 65 kg |
| Legs | Reverse-jointed, bird-inspired (Cassie lineage) |
| Eyes | LED, communication only; sensors live in the torso |
| First job | GXO / Spanx, June 2024 |
| Task | Moving totes from cobots to conveyors |
| Business model | RaaS: the industry’s first humanoid contract |
| Orchestration | Agility Arc (fleet management) |
| Factory | RoboFab (Salem, Oregon) |
Backward knees and eyes that don’t see: how Digit is built
The first thing about Digit that throws people is the legs: the knees seem bent backwards, like an ostrich’s. It isn’t an aesthetic whim but twenty years of physics. Jonathan Hurst, a robotics professor at Oregon State University, spent his career studying how legged animals run (the spring-mass model that lets an ostrich run for hours on almost no energy) and founded Agility Robotics to turn that theory into machines. The first result was Cassie, a meter-tall pair of legs named after the cassowary, a bird that doesn’t fly; Digit is Cassie with a torso, arms and a job. The bird geometry gives its 1.75 meters and 65 kilos natural shock absorption, walking efficiency and the ability to slip into gaps a straight leg can’t reach.
The other detail nobody forgets: Digit’s eyes don’t see. Its real sensors (LiDAR and depth cameras) are mounted in the torso; the head and its animated LED eyes exist purely to communicate with humans. When Digit is about to turn, its eyes 'look' that way before it moves, so the worker sharing the aisle knows what it will do. It is a revealing design decision: in a robot built to work among people, the face isn’t a sensor, it’s courtesy.
Why the first employed humanoid is the least spectacular
While the famous humanoids piled up views, Agility piled up shift hours. On June 5, 2024, Digit started working at a GXO facility near Atlanta that fulfills Spanx orders: it picks up totes handed over by collaborative robots and places them on conveyors, a task so uncinematic that no video of it will ever go viral. That is exactly the point: as we explain in teleoperated vs. autonomous, autonomy matures first in bounded, measurable tasks, and Digit is the walking proof.
The contract matters as much as the robot. GXO didn’t buy units: it signed the industry’s first humanoid-as-a-service agreement, paying for work performed the way you pay for an AMR fleet. For the sector it was the signal that a humanoid can enter a logistics operator’s income statement, not just its press release.
What Digit says about the warehouse’s future
The uncomfortable question is whether a humanoid pays off against a specialized AMR, which does the same transport faster and cheaper. Agility’s answer is the in-between niche: tasks designed for people (table heights, totes, steps) in buildings that won’t be remodeled, where the human form avoids rebuilding the facility. It is the same logic that separates an AMR from an AGV, one rung up: the machine adapts to the environment, not the other way around.
That is why we track Digit as the whole sector’s control case: it is the bar for what a humanoid does TODAY autonomously and profitably, against which we measure every new promise in our humanoid comparison and the warehouse robotics guide.
Industries
Frequently asked
Why do Digit’s legs bend backwards?
Because they are inspired by running birds: that geometry, inherited from its predecessor Cassie (named after the cassowary), absorbs impacts, spends less energy walking and lets it work in tight spaces. It is the result of co-founder Jonathan Hurst’s twenty years of locomotion research.
Is Agility’s Digit truly autonomous?
At its task, yes: it moves totes between cobots and conveyors with no operator in the loop, orchestrated by the Arc software. It is warehouse-bounded autonomy, not general-purpose, and that is why it works.
Where does Digit work today?
Its first commercial job is a GXO logistics facility near Atlanta, Georgia that fulfills Spanx orders, running since June 2024 under a multi-year contract.
Can I buy a Digit?
Not as an individual. Agility deploys it with industrial partners under the RaaS model, with no public price. If you want a buyable humanoid, the Unitree G1 is today’s only real option.
Sources
- GXO Signs Industry-First Multi-Year Agreement with Agility Robotics
- Digit Deployed at GXO in Historic Humanoid RaaS Agreement
- Digit is first humanoid deployed in a commercial application
- GXO, Agility Launch Industry’s First RaaS Humanoid Robot Deployment
- Agility Robotics Introduces Cassie, a Dynamic and Talented Robot Delivery Ostrich
- Agility Robotics’ next-gen Digit robot has head, hands, LED eyes