22 October 2026 | Interaction | By Editor Robotics Business NEWS <editor@rbnpress.com>
In an exclusive conversation with Robotics Business News, Pras Velagapudi, CTO of Agility Robotics, discusses the company’s expanded partnership with FORT Robotics to strengthen safety systems for its Digit 5 humanoid robot. The collaboration focuses on integrated safety controls, external safety interfaces and reliable communication between robotic systems and facility infrastructure.
The conversation explores human-robot collaboration, regulatory compliance and the challenges of scaling humanoid robots across warehouses, manufacturing facilities and logistics operations. Velagapudi explains how layered safety systems, industry standards and real-world deployment experience can help build confidence in robots working alongside people.
What led FORT Robotics and Agility Robotics to formalize this strategic partnership, and what does it mean for the future safety of humanoid robots?
We've worked with FORT for years, and their technology has been part of previous generations of Digit. As Digit has evolved to take on more tasks across a wider range of industrial environments, our safety requirements have grown more complex. What began with a single custom component has developed into a broader collaboration.
The expanded partnership brings FORT into a larger role across hardware development, solutions engineering, regulatory compliance, and deployment support. For Agility, it’s about ensuring that the safety systems supporting Digit advance alongside the robot’s capabilities and can support larger deployments where people and robots work together.
How does the new Offboard Safety Bridge extend the safety architecture of Agility's Digit 5 beyond the robot itself?
The Offboard Safety Bridge, jointly developed with FORT, is designed to connect Digit with external safety systems so that safety inputs from the surrounding environment can inform the robot’s onboard safety systems. This extends Digit’s safety architecture beyond its onboard sensors, helping integrate the robot into a facility’s broader safety infrastructure.
What are the biggest safety challenges when humanoid robots operate in close proximity to people in warehouses, manufacturing facilities, and logistics environments?
One of the biggest challenges is that Digit needs to exert large forces and movements to do useful work: it can’t avoid everything in the environment. Doing this safely means understanding where people are and are not. People and equipment don’t always move predictably, and a robot needs to account for that while making its own behavior clear to the people around it.
Digit 5 is being designed with Safe Human Detection, safety cues, and safe motion control to support that interaction. Together, these capabilities are intended to help Digit work safely alongside people without traditional physical safety barriers, with each deployment evaluated for its specific tasks and operating conditions.
How do FORT's safety pendant, on-robot communications, and off-robot interfaces work together to create a layered safety architecture for Digit 5?
Digit 5 is capable of composing a number of different sources of information together to make a safety decision. FORT technology allows us to seamlessly combine these sources: a human operator maintaining line-of-sight supervision of the robot using the pendant, or a facility safety PLC triggering a site-wide emergency stop via the off-robot interface. With FORT installed on-robot, these signals are safely and reliably communicated to Digit’s onboard safety controller to turn these inputs into safe motion decisions for the robot.
As humanoid robots become more autonomous, how should safety systems evolve to handle unexpected interactions between robots, workers, and surrounding equipment?
Greater autonomy needs to be supported by safety systems that can detect changing conditions and trigger an appropriate safe response. As Digit takes on more tasks across a wider range of industrial environments, those systems need to account for unexpected interactions with people and equipment.
Digit already operates autonomously during normal work. The goal is to support increasingly capable autonomous operation while ensuring operators have a clear, reliable way to intervene when needed.
What role will regulatory compliance and emerging robotics safety standards play in enabling large-scale commercial deployment of humanoid robots?
Regulatory compliance and clear safety standards are essential to building customer confidence and enabling humanoid robots to scale across industrial environments. As Digit enters new facilities and applications, its safety architecture must account for different operating conditions, customer requirements, and applicable safety standards.
Agility is helping shape that framework through active contributions to ISO 25785-1, the first international safety standard under development for this category of robot, and ANSI/A3 TR R15.108, a technical report under development for dynamically stable industrial mobile robots, including humanoids, in the U.S. and Canada. Our expanded partnership with FORT complements that work with regulatory compliance and deployment support, helping customers address safety requirements as deployments scale.
How can safety technology help manufacturers move from individual humanoid robot pilots toward larger deployments across complex industrial environments?
Safety technology helps manufacturers deploy robots in more areas of a facility and integrate them into existing workflows. Designing humanoids to work safely alongside people without traditional safety barriers can reduce the floor space and layout changes needed to support deployment, making it easier to expand beyond an initial pilot.
Earlier generations of Digit have logged more than 65,000 hours of operation, including deployments at Schaeffler, GXO, and Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada. That experience informs Digit 5’s safety architecture, with a focus on supporting shared workspaces and adapting to the operating conditions of each facility.
Looking ahead, what is FORT Robotics' vision for building the safety and trust infrastructure required for the broader adoption of Physical AI and autonomous humanoid robots?
FORT is best positioned to speak to its vision. From Agility’s perspective, broader adoption depends on customers and workers having confidence that humanoid robots can perform useful work safely and reliably alongside people in real industrial environments.
Our vision is for humanoid robots to become a trusted part of the workforce, taking on physically demanding, repetitive tasks. Realizing that vision requires safety to be built into the robot from the outset and supported throughout deployment. Our expanded partnership with FORT is part of that work, helping us advance the safety infrastructure alongside Digit as we scale.
