How much would it cost to deploy a humanoid robot in a factory?
Dexterity robotics gave us one of the clearest answers yet.
In a securities filing on Tuesday, the Oregon-based robotics company provided a glimpse into the economics behind it two-legged robot, Digit.
According to one business model outlined in the filing, a customer who buys the company’s next-generation Digit v5 would pay about $200,000 for the robot itself, plus about $20,000 in one-time implementation costs. After that, software and maintenance would cost about $36,000 per year per bot.
Add that up over a five-year “Digit useful life” assumed by Agility, and the figure for one humanoid robot comes to about $400,000.
The figures are ‘illustrative’ estimates that Agility used to model Digit’s economics, and do not reflect the costs a real customer would pay.
The company wrote in the filing that contracts are subject to negotiation. Agility also didn’t say that Digit would stop working after five years – only that it assumed a useful life of five years in the context of its model.
Still, Agility says the calculation could turn out in the customer’s favor quite quickly.
“Based on our current planning assumptions, Digit v5 is expected to reach customer breakeven in approximately 1.1 years,” the filing said, citing productivity, uptime and employee availability as factors in the calculation.
The company hasn’t broken down the math on returns. Agility did not respond to a request for comment.
Agility said in the filing that the robot is designed to work approximately 20 hours in a 24-hour period, meaning customers can get more work out of the robots. The Digit can lift up to 50 pounds, the company said.
Agility’s Digit v4 has been deployed at nine customer facilities, including Scaheffler, GXO, Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada and Amazon.
Co-founder Jonathan Hurst told Business Insider earlier in July that Digit’s tasks these days are relatively simple, such as picking and moving bins and bins.
Agility said it expects to release the next-generation v5 robot later this year.
Few robotics companies have announced prices for their humanoids. Chinas Unitree Robotics advertises its G1 humanoid starting at $13,500, but the company’s robots are primarily used for research and development rather than in industrial settings.
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