Toyota Canada Bets on Digit Robots to Move Bins

Digit robots start moving bins at Toyota Canada plant. Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada (TMMC) has signed an agreement with Agility Robotics to deploy its Digit humanoids after a year-long pilot that included development, proof-of-technology, and onsite phases. The company says the pilot began with three Digits and will ramp to seven more, to load and unload totes from an automated tugger as part of a broader push to lift operations without sacrificing human safety or experience.

Production data shows TMMC is a behemoth in Canada’s auto manufacturing scene. The Cambridge and Woodstock plants together form Toyota’s largest operation outside Japan, assembling hundreds of thousands of vehicles annually. In 2025, Toyota’s Canadian facility network turned out more than 535,000 vehicles and employed about 8,500 people, underscoring why the automation decision carries strategic weight for both throughput and labor stability. The company is also advancing its product agenda at home, planning to build the sixth generation RAV4 at its Canadian sites with a roughly $1.1 billion investment, a reminder that automation is not happening in a vacuum but as part of a broader productivity push.

The lead-in from TMMC’s leadership makes the rationale explicit. Tim Hollander, president of TMMC, lauded Toyota’s history of factory innovation while signaling a measured optimism about Digit’s fit. “Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada has long been a leader in automotive manufacturing innovation,” Hollander said, framing the deployment as a tested step forward rather than a risky leap. The pilot’s phases—development, proof-of-technology, and onsite validation—are telling: Toyota is treating Digit not as a showroom demo but as an integrated part of the cell, with real-world constraints and safety standards to meet before a broader rollout.

The practical use case centers on material handling and tote management. Digit’s demonstrated capability at GXO Logistics’ facility, in a robot-as-a-service arrangement, provided the proof of concept that a humanoid can navigate a busy logistics stream and physically move containers along a tugger-supported path. At Toyota Canada, the plan is to extend that footprint: seven additional digits would join the three already piloted to support the load/unload tasks from the automated tugger, a clear signal that the company is testing a staged expansion rather than a single-point showcase. The goal, as described by integration teams, is to improve team member experience while pushing marginal gains in overall throughput.

From a practical standpoint, the absence of disclosed cycle-time gains or a published payback figure is notable. Toyota did not publish public ROI numbers with the announcement, leaving CFOs and operations directors to request the same critical data reviewers demand elsewhere: how quickly will digits repay the investment, and what are the exact conditions that drive that payback? In the field, payback is usually sensitive to the task choice (repetitive lifting vs. nuanced assembly), integration with ERP/WMS, and the frequency of exception handling. In other words, Digit’s ROI depends as much on process design as on the robot’s mechanical performance.

What this rollout underscores for plant-floor teams is the blend of work that still requires humans and what Digital workers can handle. Robots excel at repetitive handling, but human workers remain essential for setup, supervision, quality checks, and handling the unexpected. Integration requirements—floor space, power provisioning, and operator training—will be the real tests that determine whether this becomes a scalable deployment or an isolated pilot like so many “seamless integration” promises that paused at the first wrinkle. The company’s ROI narratives, when they do emerge, will need to include not just the uptime of the digits but the time saved in human tasks, the reliability of the tugger interface, and the costs of ongoing software and safety upgrades.

In the end, the Digit deployment at Toyota Canada is less a single “robot win” than a signal: humanoid automation is entering core automotive operations in North America, and the CFOs watching the clock will want to see the numbers behind the tech. If the seven-new-robots plan translates into meaningful cycle-time relief and safer, steadier handling of totes, the payback questions may finally get answered in real, auditable terms.

Sources

Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada to deploy Agility Robotics’ Digit humanoids