Risks and future prospects
Agility said it continues to dedicate “substantially all of its resources to the research, development and commercialization of its humanoid robot,” while continuing to expand RoboFab’s manufacturing facilities. On October 21, Agility also announced plans to build a new facility in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to support deployments of the Digit robot and further develop the robot’s software and artificial intelligence.
Beyond the challenges of building its own business, Agility’s financial disclosures also warned that “competition in the humanoid and robotics market is rapidly intensifying, with well-funded players including Boston Dynamics, Tesla, Apptronik, Figure AI, 1X Technologies, Sanctuary AI, Hexagon and NEURA Robotics, among others, actively developing competitive humanoid systems.”
Many of those companies have advantages, such as “significantly greater brand recognition, customer relationships, and financial, technical, manufacturing and other resources,” Agility’s S-4 filing acknowledged. It also listed business risks involving uncertain performance of AI-powered robots in the real world, security issues when sharing workspaces with human workers, changing regulations, and cybersecurity threats.
Still, Agility co-founder Hurst described a large potential market with “millions of unfilled roles” involving manual tasks that would normally require higher-cost but relatively low-skilled human labor. Over the next year, Hurst expects several Agility customers to share videos of Digit robots “doing their jobs in a very boring way” to the point where “all the excitement and hype and novelty of humanoids has worn off.”
“It will be a little like the dawn of the automotive market, and different companies will have different niches: some companies will build the Ford F-150 and others will build a Mazda Miata,” Hurst told Ars. “There will be many different niches for multipurpose human-centered machines like these.”
Although Hurst believes Agility’s path will eventually lead to a general-purpose autonomous robot in the future, he has consistently dismissed the idea of any company immediately deploying humanoid robots in riskier, less structured environments, such as people’s homes. “Digit 5 is not going to come into your living room and wash dishes and things like that,” he said. “No one is.”
Whatever happens with Agility’s journey in the coming years, it will be instructive for anyone interested in the broader trajectory of the humanoid robot industry.
