Toyota hires seven Agility humanoid robots for Canadian factory

After a year-long aviator project, Toyota’s Canadian manufacturing subsidiary has hired 7 humanoid robots to enactment successful a works gathering RAV4 SUVs nether a robots-as-a-service deal.

“After evaluating a fig of robots, we are excited to deploy Digit to amended the squad subordinate acquisition and further summation operational ratio successful our manufacturing facilities,” Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada President Tim Hollander said successful a statement.

The Digit robot successful question is built by Agility Robotics, a steadfast spun retired of Oregon State University successful 2015. Digit is intended to enactment successful concern environments without humans nearby, often bridging 2 antithetic automated accumulation lines. In this case, the robots volition beryllium unloading totes afloat of car parts from an automated warehouse tugger.

While 7 robots doing manual drudgery whitethorn look a tiny measurement compared to sizzle reels of metallic humans doing backflips, really deploying humanoid robots successful existent workplaces is uncommon and difficult. Demonstrating a capableness successful a laboratory is 1 thing, but integrating it into a company’s workflow — including attraction and charging — isn’t easy. 

“When the tech companies walk existent clip successful the tract knowing the task that needs to beryllium operated, the existent workflows that happens…that’s erstwhile we volition spot a immense uptick successful adoption,” Ram Devarajulu, a VP astatine Cambridge Consultants, said astatine the Humanoids Summit successful precocious 2025. 

Agility is among the leaders successful getting robots retired of the lab, with Digits moving successful akin capacities for logistics providers similar GXO, Schaeffler, and Amazon. The institution has a proprietary cloud-based bundle bundle called Arc for users to negociate fleets of their robots, and says AI volition beryllium captious successful reducing deployment costs. 

“Cost of deployment … tin beryllium much than the terms of the robot by a lot,” Pras Velagapudi, Agility’s CTO, said successful an interrogation past year. “AI tools fto america alteration that outgo of deployment, alteration the magnitude of clip getting the robot configured and getting it operating astatine a level of show that they want.”

TMMC and Agility volition usage this engagement arsenic an accidental to pioneer different usage cases that relieve quality workers of repetitive carnal tasks and prioritize much invaluable work. 

The institution is besides preparing a adjacent procreation robot that volition beryllium harmless to run alongside quality workers; existent humanoid robots that are beardown capable to assistance dense loads are inactive considered excessively unreliable to run autonomously astir people.

Competitor Figure.AI tested its Figure 02 robots successful a BMW mill for 10 months past year, which the institution said unloaded 90,000 parts. Other companies deploying humanoids successful aviator programs see Apptronic, Unitree, Tesla, Boston Dynamics, 1X Technology, and Reflex Robotics.