Agility Robotics and FORT Robotics Formalize a Safety Partnership Around Digit 5

Agility Robotics and FORT Robotics said on October 1, 2026 that they signed a memorandum of understanding to advance the safety infrastructure of Digit 5, Agility's next-generation humanoid robot. The two companies described an engagement that has grown from a single custom hardware component into what they call an integrated, three-part safety architecture: a safety pendant, on-robot communications, and off-robot interfaces that connect Digit with external safety systems.

According to Agility, the off-robot interface was jointly developed by the two companies and is designed to extend its cooperative-safety approach beyond the robot itself, on top of the onboard safety architecture already planned for Digit 5. The agreement also sets a broader operating framework covering joint hardware development, solutions engineering, regulatory compliance and deployment support as Digit 5 scales into warehouses, manufacturing and logistics sites.

Agility says Digit 5 will be its first humanoid robot engineered for cooperatively safe work, built on a safety architecture spanning safe human detection, safety cues and safe motion control. The company says Digit 5's predecessors have logged more than 65,000 hours of operation and have been deployed at customer sites including Schaeffler, GXO and Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada.

Agility says it has embedded FORT's technology in several past versions of Digit, and that it engaged FORT earlier this year to deliver the pendant sled, a custom-built holder for Digit's tablet that integrates emergency stop and enabling-device functionality. The company says Digit 5, like Digit 4, will be capable of operating autonomously during normal work, with the pendant used to monitor the robot and give the customer a redundant manual override during setup, maintenance or an unexpected situation.

"Every layer we've added with FORT has made Digit's safety system more resilient, not just more redundant," said Pras Velagapudi, CTO at Agility Robotics. "The Offboard Safety Bridge is a good example of what this partnership is really about: building safety infrastructure that works whether the input is coming from onboard the robot, or from the environment around it, so the robot can be trusted to operate near people in a more diverse set of environments."

"Agility has established itself as the leader in humanoid robotics by focusing on the only metrics that matter: safety and ROI," said Samuel Reeves, Founder and CEO of FORT Robotics. "Physical AI only earns trust when the safety layer around it is as capable and as accountable as the robot itself. Formalizing this as a strategic partnership reflects how central that architecture has become to getting humanoid robots to work safely in close proximity with people."

The companies said they expect the expanded partnership to support Agility's ongoing enterprise deployments and to inform the safety architecture of Digit 5 and future generations of the platform as the robot takes on a wider range of environments and tasks. FORT, founded in 2018, describes itself as the Trust Layer for Physical AI, and Agility is headquartered in Salem, Oregon, with offices in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Fremont, California.

Source: Agility Robotics (https://www.agilityrobotics.com/content/agility-and-fort-robotics-announce-strategic-partnership-to-advance-humanoid-robot-safety).