Agility Robotics Reveals $400,000 Total Cost Model for Digit Humanoid
Agility Robotics revealed the economic model for its Digit humanoid robot, showing a total five-year cost of $400,000 per unit with a break-even time of 1.1 years.
How much does it cost to employ a humanoid robot in a factory? American robotics company Agility Robotics is now providing one of the clearest answers given so far in the industry. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Oregon-based company revealed the economic model behind its humanoid robot, Digit. The data reveals for the first time the true costs of integrating robotic workers into production lines, showing that this is not merely a one-time purchase, but a significant ongoing expense.
The Cost of Employing Digit
According to the model presented by the company for its new model, the Digit v5, a customer will need to pay approximately $200,000 for the robot itself, alongside a one-time installation cost of about $20,000. Following that, ongoing software and maintenance costs will amount to roughly $36,000 per year for each robot. Calculated over a total period of five years, which the company assumes as the "useful life" for the model's purposes, the total cost of a single robot reaches approximately $400,000.
Agility emphasizes that these are estimates for the economic model only, and that the final price is determined through negotiations with each customer. However, the company argues that the investment may pay off very quickly. According to its forecasts, customers are expected to reach a financial break-even point in just about 1.1 years, thanks to improvements in work productivity, worker availability, and the fact that the robot is capable of working long hours without breaks.
Operating 20 Hours a Day
The Digit robot is designed to operate for about 20 hours out of a 24-hour day, allowing factories to extract a particularly large amount of work from it. It is capable of lifting weights of up to 50 pounds. The company's previous model has already been integrated into nine facilities of prominent customers, including e-commerce giant Amazon, Japanese automaker Toyota in Canada, and companies like Schaeffler and GXO. Currently, the robot's tasks are relatively simple and mainly involve lifting and transferring containers and boxes.
The company is expected to launch the new model later this year. While few robotics companies have disclosed the prices of their robots thus far, Chinese company Unitree offers a humanoid robot at a starting price of $13,500, though it is primarily intended for research and development rather than industrial use.
