Agility Robotics Brand Guidelines: Oregon State, Cassie, Digit & the Rename to Agility

A university walking lab becomes a company.

Agility Robotics was founded in 2015 as a spin-off from Oregon State University’s Dynamic Robotics Laboratory, English Wikipedia says, by Jonathan Hurst, Damion Shelton and Mikhail Jones. It grew out of the university’s research on walking on two legs. When IEEE Spectrum introduced the company’s first robot in February 2017, it described the team as the people behind the ATRIAS research robots, one of which, MARLO, was being used at the University of Michigan, and it quoted Hurst, a co-founder and Oregon State professor, on how the lessons of ATRIAS had shaped the new machine’s legs.

That first robot was Cassie, a pair of legs with no upper body that IEEE Spectrum compared to an ostrich. The company told the magazine it saw uses in research, disaster relief and, in the long term, delivering parcels to front doors; the magazine noted that Cassie had been filmed walking on dirt, grass and a wobbly dock and standing in the Oregon rain. Compared with ATRIAS, it had a hip with three degrees of freedom, so it could be steered, and powered ankles that let it stand in place without constantly stepping, IEEE Spectrum explained. Agility sold Cassie to research institutions from 2017, and a University of Michigan lab was among the first to receive one, IEEE Spectrum reported. In 2022 Cassie set a Guinness World Record for the fastest 100 metres run by a bipedal robot, according to Wikipedia.

The company is based in Salem, Oregon, the dateline of its press releases, and it builds its robots there. Its leadership has since moved beyond the founding researchers: the website names Peggy Johnson, formerly chief executive of the augmented-reality company Magic Leap, as chief executive, and Pras Velagapudi, who joined in May 2023, as chief technology officer.

Digit, RoboFab and the warehouse.

In 2019 Agility released Digit, a full-size humanoid that added a torso, arms and a perception system to Cassie’s style of legs, Wikipedia says. Ford bought a version to explore last-mile delivery, pairing Digit with early self-driving vehicles. From 2021 Agility pointed Digit at warehouses and logistics, focusing on bulk material handling such as moving totes.

A redesigned Digit was presented in 2023 at ProMat, the material-handling and logistics trade show, and the company then announced RoboFab, its humanoid-robot factory in Salem, Wikipedia says. Late in 2023 Agility announced a partnership with Amazon to bring Digit into its facilities, followed by a similar arrangement with GXO Logistics at a facility GXO runs for Spanx outside Atlanta, Georgia; in 2024 the two signed what Wikipedia calls their first humanoid robot-as-a-service contract. Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada moved to deploy Digit after a year-long pilot, The Robot Report reported in March 2026, naming GXO, Schaeffler and Amazon as other companies using the robot.

The company now presents Digit 5 as its next-generation robot. In early November 2026 it listed GXO, Schaeffler and Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada as commercial users of Digit, said GXO would add two more US sites from early 2027, and said AGCO would pilot Digit at its plant in Hesston, Kansas, from 2027. Its cloud software for deploying and managing fleets of robots is called Agility Arc. The company says it has logged more than 65,000 hours of real-world operation and that Digit has moved more than 100,000 totes at the GXO deployment in Georgia; those are its own figures, published when it went public.

How humanoid makers present themselves.

Humanoid and legged-robot makers sell machines that most people have only seen on a screen, so video carries much of their identity. Boston Dynamics built a public following through clips of its robots: a 2017 video of the Spot quadruped opening a door for another robot reached the top of YouTube, “Parkour Atlas” followed in 2018, and in 2025 a troupe of robot dogs danced on America’s Got Talent, according to Wikipedia. When Hyundai Motor Group completed its purchase of the company in 2021, its announcement video showed Atlas dancing beside a child, The Robot Report noted.

The newer story is work. Makers now show their robots in factories and warehouses rather than in labs: Agility’s Digit handling totes for the logistics group GXO, and Boston Dynamics’ electric Atlas being trained to sequence car parts at a Hyundai plant in Georgia, as each company describes it. Press releases lean on customer names, pilot sites and hours of operation, and trade reporters such as The Robot Report and IEEE Spectrum follow those claims from launch to deployment.

Launches happen on stages built for that audience. Agility presented a redesigned Digit at ProMat, the material-handling show, in 2023, and Boston Dynamics unveiled its new Atlas at Hyundai’s media day at CES 2026, the companies say. Research conferences such as ICRA, the IEEE’s robotics and automation meeting, and the World Robot Conference in China play the same part for engineers and the trade.

Identities shift as the companies grow up. In March 2026 Agility Robotics became simply Agility, with a refreshed logo that the company said was inspired by the hardware and software it builds, The Robot Report reported. This guide sets out what can be checked about each company: who founded it, who owns it, where it builds its robots, and which claims rest only on its own word.

A shorter name and a Nasdaq listing.

The brand itself changed in 2026. In March Agility Robotics dropped “Robotics” and began presenting itself simply as Agility, with a refreshed logo and “verbal identity” that the company said were inspired by the hardware and software it designs and builds, The Robot Report reported on 7 March 2026. The company said the shorter name “allows space for us to grow” into new uses, services and industries, and that the new logo was meant to stand for motion, innovation, progress, reliability and durability. Its chief business officer, Daniel Diez, said the name was meant to signal readiness to scale and that “Agility represents flexibility, durability, and forward motion,” the trade site reported. Its website now uses the name Agility throughout, while the legal entity is still Agility Robotics, Inc., and it lists Agility, Digit, Agility Arc, RoboFab and “Made for Work” among its trademarks.

Ownership changed in November 2026. On 4 November Agility completed a business combination with Churchill Capital Corp XI, a special purpose acquisition company listed on Nasdaq, and on 5 November its shares began trading on Nasdaq under the ticker AGLT, the company announced. It describes itself as the first US publicly listed pure-play humanoid robotics company with active commercial deployments; that is the company’s own description. The combined company keeps the name Agility Robotics, Inc. and its base in Salem.

For a design guide, Agility Robotics shows a research spin-off simplifying its name as it turns into a listed manufacturer. Compare Boston Dynamics, another American maker of legged robots, and Apptronik. For this guide we use a slate blue, a pale steel and an orange with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Agility Robotics’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.