The company has not chosen a design, customer, or launch date for a wheeled machine.
Agility Robotics is considering wheels alongside the legs used by its Digit humanoid robots. Jonathan Hurst, the company’s chief executive and chief robot officer, told The Robot Report that Agility is exploring “a range of robot designs and form factors, including wheels” for different workplaces and customer needs.
That is an exploration, not a product announcement. Agility has not said whether it would build a wheeled version of Digit or create an entirely new robot. Hurst said the effort is “really just starting,” and the company has given no market timeline.
The engineering case for wheels is straightforward. On flat, predictable floors, wheels can provide more stability with simpler mechanics and lower energy use. A wheeled robot may therefore make sense in facilities where it mainly travels across smooth floors and does not need to climb steps.
Legs solve a different problem. They can help robots move through spaces designed for people, including areas with stairs, obstacles, and uneven ground. That flexibility costs more mechanical complexity, so the best design depends heavily on the site.
The idea surfaced in a rendering shown near the end of Agility’s Digit 5 launch video, according to The Robot Report. The report does not describe a tested prototype, customer deployment, or commercial order for a wheeled Agility robot.
For operators, the next useful question is not whether Agility prefers wheels or legs. It is which workplace the company targets first—and whether it can show a working machine that performs reliably there.