Agility Robotics, the Oregon startup best known for its bipedal Digit humanoid, is telling customers it is no longer a one-form-factor company. A wheeled robot rendering that flashed across the Digit 5 launch video was not an accident, and co-founder and CEO Jonathan Hurst now says the company is actively weighing wheels alongside legs.
Beyond bipedal
Hurst told The Robot Report that Agility is "exploring a range of robot designs and form factors, including wheels, to address different operating environments and customer needs." The rationale is pragmatic: legs still cost more, break more and top out at slower speeds than wheels in flat, structured warehouses, where much of Digit's early revenue lives. A wheeled sibling could ship faster and let Agility book contracts today that its bipedal roadmap will not touch for another year or two.
What Agility isn't saying
Hurst was cagey on specifics. "Too early to say! I have guesses and inclinations, but really we're just starting," he said. That leaves open several possibilities: a pure automated mobile robot, a hybrid wheeled-legged machine, or a wheeled base that snaps into Digit's upper body. All three are being prototyped inside the humanoid industry, and Agility has the manipulation stack from Digit to lean on if it goes the hybrid route.
A pragmatic pivot for a bipedal pioneer
The move puts Agility in step with rivals that have already hedged. Rivian spin-out Mind Robotics pitched wheeled industrial robots from day one, and Chinese entrant AGIBOT — which this week dropped 300 humanoids into a Chinese theme park — ships both wheeled and bipedal designs. Tesla's Optimus meanwhile is still hand-limited, with the company saying this week that it is ramping only to hundreds of units per week. Legs are hard; wheels are shipped.
What to watch
Agility has not committed to a public timeline. Hurst framed the effort as exploratory, with the company still betting long-term that bipedal is the right end state for warehouse and manufacturing work. Whether a wheeled Agility robot arrives as a numbered Digit variant or as a distinct product line will say a lot about how the industry now thinks about humanoids: as a destination, or as one of several tools in the fleet.
Reporting based on coverage from The Robot Report.