Agility Robotics has debuted its first humanoid robot engineered to work safely near humans without risking harm to flesh-and-blood coworkers. Such safety features could unlock many more opportunities to use such robots inside warehouses and automotive factories—all without requiring isolated robot work cells and physical separation barriers.

When Agility’s new Digit 5 robot detects a person at a distance, it can autonomously take precautions, like moving to avoid the person or standing still so the person can pass by without getting closer. If a person is getting into close proximity with Digit 5, the robot can even choose to squat and assume a seated position.

“The robot was designed with a complex safe motion system that can take a variety of different mitigations depending on exactly what sort of human presence is detected,” Pras Velagapudi, chief technology officer at Agility, told Ars.

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In a world where self-driving robotaxis glide through major city streets without drivers behind the wheel and delivery drones autonomously fly through the skies to drop off orders at customers’ homes, the idea of general-purpose robots helping humans with various tasks in workplaces or even homes may not seem far-fetched.

But that future hinges on developing increasingly autonomous robots powered by modern artificial intelligence—an ambitious vision that has motivated many researchers to become startup founders while also attracting billions of dollars in investment.

“When I started maybe about 15 years ago, I led a project team that was focused on autonomy, but in that era, the goal of that team was to just get a robot to navigate from point A to point B,” said Matt Malchano, vice president of software at the robotics company Boston Dynamics based in Waltham, Massachusetts. “And now, when we think of autonomy, we think of this huge space of tasks and things that we can imagine a robot doing on its own.”

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