The Agile ONE humanoid will be manufactured in Germany. Source: Agile Robots
More humanoid robots are coming to market. Agile Robots SE today said it is launching Agile ONE, its first humanoid. The company said the robot is designed to work safely and efficiently alongside people and other systems in industrial settings.
“At Agile Robots, we believe the next industrial revolution is physical AI — intelligent, autonomous and flexible robots that can perceive, understand and act in the physical world,” stated Dr. Zhaopeng Chen, co-founder and CEO of Agile Robots. “Agile ONE embodies this revolution.”
Founded in 2018, Agile Robots said its new humanoid builds on its existing portfolio, which includes the Agile Hand, the FR3 force-sensitive robotic arm, the Diana 7 power- and force-limited arm, and the Thor series robot arms.
The Munich, Germany-based company in 2023 acquired cobot arm maker Franka Emika GmbH. It also makes automated guided vehicles (AGVs) and autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), as well as the AgileCore AI-driven software platform.
Agile Robots has 2,500 employees and has doubled its revenue in the past four years, Chen told The Robot Report. It has installed more than 20,000 systems, focusing on the automotive and consumer electronics sectors.
Agile ONE includes intuitive HRI, dexterous grippers
The new humanoid combines intuitive human-robot interaction (HRI), a dexterous robotic hand, and an innovative AI model trained on real-world data, according to Agile Robots. The company said it focused on flexibility, perceptiveness, and communications.
The system’s user interface includes responsive eye rings that light up and blink to confirm understanding, proximity sensors and a rearview camera for safety, and a chest display with real-time information.
“We want to build a co-worker that humans can trust and that people are comfortable to work around,” said Chen. “We’ve already worked with cobots and are participating in discussions in Europe for new safety standards for humanoids.”
Agile Robots’ five-fingered hands have multiple sensors to mimic human levels of dexterity.
“This is actually based on my Ph.D. work 12 years ago,” Chen noted. “Sensitivity is embedded in the hand, with force sensing in the joints and tactile sensing in the fingertips. The robot can manipulate a tiny screw, operate a power tool, or touch a screen.”
Agile ONE is designed for initial use in structured industrial environments. Source: Agile Robots
Agile Robots takes a layered approach to training data, AI
One differentiator for Agile Robots is its layered approach to artificial intelligence, said Chen. He described a “data pyramid” with a base of real-world teleoperation and field data, followed by physical simulation data and a top layer derived from videos and images.
Similarly, the new humanoid’s “brain” includes layers of cognition and control. “The first layer is slow thinking — how to do things step by step, planning a task like a human,” explained Chen. “The second, fast thinking, is for individual actions like grasping, opening a gate, or any dynamic situations.”
“The third layer is we give low-level, high-frequency control of fine manipulation. Humans don’t think about how to position each finger to hold an object,” he said. “Our AI model is trained on one of Europe’s largest real-world datasets.”
“Our HRI, dexterous manipulation, and foundation model for layered AI systems all contribute to distinguish Agile ONE from competitors,” asserted Chen. “NVIDIA is providing the computational power, but we believe that models have to be self-trained and that in-house hardware design goes hand in hand with software iteration.”
“Agile ONE is the most advanced embodiment of physical AI, but it’s by no means the only one,” added Rory Sexton, senior vice president of operations at Agile Robots. “We make wheeled humanoids, general-purpose composing robots [mobile manipulators], robot arms, and mobile robots. This is our most advanced robotic body, but we also focus on the brain and the training data to learn everyday tasks.”
Humanoid to be built in Germany
While Agile Robotics has suppliers and customers in China, Europe, and the U.S., it designed the new robot’s motors, actuators, and control systems in Germany, managing its entire supply chain. The company also plans to manufacture the robot in-house in Bavaria starting in early 2026.
The humanoid is designed for a wide variety of industrial tasks, including material gathering and transport, pick-and-place operations, machine tending, tool use, and fine manipulation. Agile Robotics is initially focusing on common manufacturing tasks, but as more customers collect high-quality data, they could train their own agents, said Sexton.
He added that AgileCore could eventually connect the humanoid to robots from Agile Robots and other vendors. “That’s part of the power of physical AI: A robot that stands alone isn’t as useful as one that’s connected,” Sexton noted.
While Agile Robots didn’t yet specify expected production numbers or a price for Agile ONE, it expects demand for humanoids to be strong.
“Market research suggests that the total addressable market [TAM] for humanoids will be somewhere between $1.2 trillion and $4 trillion by 2035, compared with the TAM for industrial automation, which is around $300 billion,” said Chen. “We want to make the product genuinely useful, and it is another building block for physical AI for industry.”
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