Toyota contracts seven Agility humanoid robots for Canadian factory

Source: TechCrunch

After a year‑long pilot project, Toyota’s Canadian manufacturing subsidiary has contracted seven humanoid robots to work in a plant building RAV4 SUVs under a robots‑as‑a‑service deal.

“After evaluating a number of robots, we are excited to deploy Digit to improve the team member experience and further increase operational efficiency in our manufacturing facilities,” said Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada (TMMC) President Tim Hollander.

The Digit robot

• Built by Agility Robotics, a firm spun out of Oregon State University in 2015.
• Designed to operate in industrial environments without humans nearby, often bridging two automated production lines.
• In this deployment, the robots will unload totes full of auto parts from an automated warehouse tugger.

Deployment challenges

Deploying humanoid robots in real workplaces is rare and difficult. Demonstrating capability in a lab differs greatly from integrating robots into a company’s workflow, including maintenance and charging.

“When the tech companies spend real time in the field understanding the task that needs to be operated, the real workflows that happen…that’s when we will see a huge uptick in adoption,” said Ram Devarajulu, VP at Cambridge Consultants, at the Humanoids Summit in late 2025.

Agility Robotics’ ecosystem

• Arc – a proprietary cloud‑based software platform that lets users manage fleets of Digit robots.
• AI is leveraged to reduce deployment costs and speed up configuration.

“Cost of deployment … can be more than the price of the robot by a lot,” noted Pras Velagapudi, Agility’s CTO. “AI tools let us decrease that cost of deployment, decrease the amount of time getting the robot configured and getting it operating at a level of performance that they want.”

Future use cases

TMMC and Agility plan to use this engagement to explore additional applications that relieve human workers of repetitive physical tasks and enable them to focus on higher‑value work. A next‑generation robot is also in development, aiming to be safe for operation alongside human workers; current humanoid robots capable of lifting heavy loads are still considered too unreliable for fully autonomous collaboration.

Industry landscape

• Figure AI tested its Figure 02 robots in a BMW factory for 10 months, unloading 90,000 parts.
• Other companies running humanoid pilot programs include Apptronic, Unitree, Tesla, Boston Dynamics, 1X Technology, and Reflex Robotics.