ONAMI portfolio company Agility Robotics Has Real Legs

Meet ONAMI portfolio company Agility Robotics founders Mechanical Engineering Professor at Oregon State Univeristy, Jonathan Hurst, Ph.D., and Damion Shelton, Ph.D.

Agility Robotics was founded in late 2015 as a spinoff from Oregon State to commercialize research from the Dynamic Robotics Laboratory on bipedal locomotion. Agility has since become a major player in industrial robotics.

Agility introduced Cassie, its first bipedal robot, in 2017 and the first version of successor Digit, a full upright robot, in 2018. Digit V3 is the latest model.

In a September 2021 article in IEEE Spectrum, Hurst explains the evolutionary process that led from Cassie to Digit:

We did not set out to build a humanoid robot. We set out to solve mobility, and we've been on a methodical path towards understanding physical interaction in the world.

Digit is a humanoid robot designed to move in a more dynamic fashion than regular robots, allowing it to navigate complex environments and carry out tasks like package delivery. The design enables robust walking and running gaits, depth perception to enable stair climbing and autonomous navigation in unstructured environments, and arms for basic manipulation tasks.

Watch the company's short video, A Year of Agility Engineering, on the technical advances the company made in 2021.

Company website: agilityrobotics.com