Meet Digit: Toyota’s newest worker doesn’t need coffee breaks

It has arms, hands, eyes — of a sort — and can stand for hours doing the same task, over and over, without uttering a word of complaint.

But Toyota Canada’s latest employee is unlike any other ever to grace the floor of the company’s Woodstock, Ont., assembly plant. You see, Digit is a humanoid robot.

Following a successful pilot, the company has signed a commercial Robots-as-a-Service agreement with Oregon-based Agility Robotics to deploy its general-purpose robot at the facility. The robots will support manufacturing, supply chain and logistics operations.

While seven robots are allocated under the agreement, deployment will begin with three units.

“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,” Tim Hollander, president of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada, said in a release.

Digit is designed to take on repetitive and physically demanding tasks commonly found on automotive production lines.

In the release, the companies said that automating “extremely repetitive and physically taxing tasks” could reduce strain and increase safety for employees, freeing them to focus on more value-added work.

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Agility Robotics CEO Peggy Johnson said partnering with Toyota, one of the world’s largest automakers, marks a significant step for humanoid robots in industrial settings.

“Toyota is one of the premier companies in the world; one with a long history of innovation and success, so it’s a privilege to join forces to integrate humanoid robotic solutions like Digit into automotive production,” Johnson said.

The companies say they will continue exploring additional use cases where robots and artificial intelligence could further augment automotive production.

Toyota joins a growing number of Fortune 500 companies deploying Agility’s humanoid robots globally, including GXO, Schaeffler and Amazon.

Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada operates vehicle assembly plants in Cambridge and Woodstock and is Toyota’s largest manufacturing operation outside Japan.

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