How much would it cost to employ a humanoid robot in a factory?
Agility Robotics gave us one of the clearest answers yet.
In a securities filing on Tuesday, the Oregon-based robotics company provided a glimpse into the economics behind its two-legged robot, Digit.
Under one business model outlined in the filing, a customer buying the company’s next-generation Digit v5 would pay about $200,000 for the robot itself, plus a roughly $20,000 onetime deployment fee. Afterward, software and maintenance would run about $36,000 a year per bot.
Add that up over a five-year “useful life of Digit” assumed by Agility, and the tab for one humanoid robot comes to about $400,000.
The figures are “illustrative” estimates that Agility used to model Digit’s economics, and do not reflect the cost a real-life customer would pay.
The company wrote in the filing that contracts are subject to negotiation. Agility also didn’t say that Digit would stop working after five years — only that it assumed a five-year useful life period for the purpose of its model.
Still, Agility says the math could work out in a customer’s favor pretty quickly.
“Based on our current planning assumptions, Digit v5 is expected to achieve customer breakeven in approximately 1.1 years,” the filing said, citing productivity, uptime, and availability of workers as factors in its calculation.
The company didn’t break down the math on the returns. Agility did not respond to a request for comment.
Agility said in the filing that its robot is designed to operate for about 20 hours within a 24-hour period, meaning customers can squeeze more work out of the robots. The Digit can lift up to 50 pounds, the company said.
Agility’s Digit v4 has been deployed at nine customer facilities, including Scaheffler, GXO, Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada, and Amazon.
Cofounder Jonathan Hurst previously told Business Insider in July that Digit’s tasks today are relatively simple, such as picking and moving bins and totes.
Agility said it expects to release the next-gen v5 robot later this year.
Few robotics companies have disclosed prices on their humanoids. China’s Unitree Robotics advertises its G1 humanoid starting at $13,500, but the company’s robots are primarily used for research and development rather than in industrial settings.
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