Agility Robotics' Digit 5 swaps ostrich legs for human-like knees built for lifting
lukas_m_ziegler · x · 2026-09-15
Agility Robotics released Digit 5, with the most visible change being the legs: the signature ostrich-style backwards knees are replaced with human-like ones.
Co-founder and chief robot officer Jonathan Hurst stressed this isn't about looking human: the old configuration was optimized for walking and running, the new one for lifting heavy things and getting up and down off the ground. The same logic applies to the hands — he argues general-purpose hands don't exist, aren't on the market, and aren't coming soon, citing Cybathlon, where the two-time reigning champion used a single-degree-of-freedom parallel-jaw gripper with one wrist rotation, beating far more complex designs.
More from Embodied
- Physical AI's real story: a 4-layer map of 15 companies behind humanoid robots — pdamodaran · 2026-11-02
- Autonomous's Harness Pro uses an ESP32-P4, not a mini PC, to monitor AI coding agents — dee_hw · 2026-11-02
- KAIST's QCP lets robot policies control execution quality in real time — kaist-ai · 2026-11-02
- ANYbotics begins customer deliveries of ANYmal X, first legged robot certified for explosive atmospheres — lukas_m_ziegler · 2026-11-02
- InSpatio opens China's first embodied simulation data center targeting 1M hours/month — 智东西 · 2026-11-02
- GR-BC mines better trajectories from imperfect demos, hitting ~91% success on precise manipulation — 机器之心 · 2026-11-02