Agility Robotics’ Digit humanoid robot is taking another significant step into the mainstream of industrial manufacturing. Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada (TMMC) — Toyota’s largest production operation outside Japan, with vehicle assembly plants in Cambridge and Woodstock, Ontario — has signed a deployment agreement with Agility Robotics following a successful year-long pilot.
The pilot involved three Digit units and moved through development, proof-of-technology, and onsite phases before both companies felt confident enough to scale. TMMC now plans to bring in seven additional Digit robots, initially deployed to handle the loading and unloading of totes from automated tuggers.
TMMC a large facility assembled over 535,000 vehicles in 2025 alone and employs more than 8,500 people. It recently committed $1.1 billion to build Toyota’s sixth-generation RAV4 at its plants — making the deployment of humanoids here a real-world commercial test at significant scale, not a small controlled experiment.
The broader rationale behind the partnership is about addressing the nature of work on automotive production lines. Many of the tasks that run continuously in auto manufacturing — the kind that are highly repetitive and physically demanding — are difficult to staff consistently and can take a toll on workers over time. The aim is to have Digit absorb those tasks, freeing human employees to focus on higher-value work that genuinely benefits from their judgment and expertise.
Agility Robotics designed Digit to integrate into existing facilities without requiring costly infrastructure changes. The robot is managed through Agility Arc, a cloud-based platform for fleet deployment and oversight. The company’s approach emphasises continuous learning, with the robot using AI to adapt to new tasks and workflows over time.
Digit’s growing roster of commercial partners now includes GXO Logistics, Schaeffler, Amazon, and Mercado Libre — putting Toyota in strong company. For Indian manufacturing sector, which is actively exploring automation to boost productivity and manage labour challenges, this kind of real-world, large-scale humanoid deployment is worth tracking closely as a model for what’s coming next.
