Digit 5's 20-hour day leaves nine minutes of slack per 108-minute cycle beyond running and charging

When a person gets close to Digit 5, Agility describes three possible responses: multiple sensors feed its human-detection software, which can steer the robot around the person, stop it, or lower it into a seated position ^[4]. A separate, independent safety controller can also intervene when someone gets too close, and visual and auditory cues signal where the robot intends to move ^[4]. The second controller is the good engineering here. It does not have to trust the perception stack that just decided nobody was there. Sitting down is also a defined safe state for a 284-pound machine that balances on two legs ^[7].

The uptime number is checkable. Agility says the battery runs 90 minutes and is designed to recharge autonomously in nine ^[11], and it calculates that the resulting 10:1 ratio supports over 20 productive hours in a 24-hour period, against Digit 4's 2:1 ^[12]. A full cycle is 99 minutes, so a day holds 14.5 of them and 21.8 hours go to work ^[20]. Hitting exactly 20 productive hours needs 13.3 runs of 90 minutes, one every 108 minutes, which leaves nine minutes per cycle for the walk to the dock and any wait once it arrives ^[21]. Nine minutes is not a generous budget for floor traffic.

Charge ratios saturate. A 2:1 machine, scheduled perfectly, works 16 hours out of 24; a 10:1 machine works 21.8, so five times the ratio buys 5.8 hours, or 36% ^[22]. Each robot also occupies a dock nine minutes out of every 99, which puts one dock behind about eleven robots at perfect scheduling ^[23]. After that, the remaining uptime is in stops and waits, including the conveyor and warehouse-system handoffs that Agility Arc is meant to coordinate ^[15].

On safety evidence, Agility says the previous Digit was the first humanoid to pass an independent field evaluation on a customer production line, against industrial safety requirements administered by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration ^[5]. That was one line at one customer. For the barrier-free claim to transfer, another floor needs comparable aisle widths and pedestrian density, and the buyer needs a document to check it against. ISO 25785-1, an international humanoid safety standard, is still being developed, and Agility is contributing to it and to the ANSI/A3 technical report for dynamically stable industrial mobile robots ^[6]. Agility is also NVIDIA's first humanoid launch partner for Halos for Robotics, pairing Digit's safety architecture with IGX Thor and Halos Core ^[8].

The hardware supports a wider pitch than the tote-moving that has dominated earlier Digit deployments ^[26]: 50 pounds lifted repeatedly, which Agility calls 40% more than Digit 4 and implies roughly 36 pounds before ^[9][24]; a 7.2-foot reach into shelving built for people ^[13]; and grippers on ISO-standard mounting flanges ^[10]. Agility plans to train Digit 5 for depalletizing, machine tending, kitting, sequencing, inspection and palletizing ^[14]. Early access comes in the first half of 2027, general availability by the end of it ^[16].

The financing runs ahead of that evidence. Agility said in June it had agreed a transaction with Churchill Capital Corp XI ^[3], and the plan pairs the 2027 rollout with a proposed listing at a $2.5B pre-money valuation ^[2]. Peggy Johnson, who took over as CEO in March 2024 after running Magic Leap, has the rollout; Jonathan Hurst remains chief robot officer ^[17][18]. In an August essay on physical AI, Hurst argued that software remains constrained by the machine executing it ^[19].