Humanoid robot could cost $400,000 over five years

Humanoid robots could cost industrial customers around $400,000 over five years, according to an illustrative cost model disclosed by US robotics company Agility Robotics, offering one of the clearest estimates yet of the potential economics of employing humanoid machines in factories.

In a securities filing, the Oregon-based company outlined the expected costs of its next-generation Digit v5 robot. Under the model, a customer would pay about $200,000 for the robot, followed by a one-time deployment fee of roughly $20,000. Software and maintenance would then cost approximately $36,000 per year, Business Insider writes. 

Using a five-year useful-life assumption, Agility's model puts the total cost at about $400,000 per robot.

The company stressed that these figures are illustrative estimates used to model Digit's economics and do not represent a fixed price that customers will necessarily pay. Contracts will be negotiated individually, and Agility did not indicate that the robot would stop operating after five years.

Despite the high upfront cost, Agility said it expects Digit v5 could reach customer breakeven relatively quickly.

"Based on our current planning assumptions, Digit v5 is expected to achieve customer breakeven in approximately 1.1 years," the company said in its filing, citing productivity, uptime and worker availability as factors in its calculations.

Agility did not provide a detailed breakdown of how it calculated the projected returns.

The company said Digit is designed to operate for around 20 hours within a 24-hour period, potentially allowing factories to use the robots for substantially longer periods than a conventional human work shift. The robot can lift up to 50 pounds, according to Agility.

The company's current-generation Digit v4 has already been deployed at nine customer facilities, including operations involving Schaeffler, GXO, Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada and Amazon.

Digit's capabilities remain focused on relatively straightforward industrial tasks. Agility co-founder Jonathan Hurst previously told Business Insider that the robot is currently used for activities such as picking up and moving bins and totes.

Agility expects to release the next-generation Digit v5 later this year.

The disclosure provides a rare look at the potential cost of deploying humanoid robots at industrial scale, as manufacturers increasingly explore automation to address labour shortages and improve productivity.

However, pricing remains difficult to compare across the rapidly developing humanoid robotics industry because relatively few companies have publicly disclosed commercial prices.

China's Unitree Robotics, for example, advertises its G1 humanoid from around $13,500, but its machines are primarily aimed at research and development rather than demanding industrial production environments.

Agility's figures therefore suggest that industrial-grade humanoid robots remain considerably more expensive than research-oriented machines, while also highlighting the industry's argument that higher purchase and operating costs could potentially be offset by long operating hours and faster productivity gains.

By Sabina Mammadli