ROBOFAB, WORLD'S FIRST FACTORY FOR HUMANOID ROBOTS
RoboFab, opened by Agility Robotics in Salem, Oregon, is the world's first dedicated factory for humanoid robots. The 70,000-square-foot facility is capable of producing more than 10,000 humanoid robots per year and represents the first time in history that bipedal, human-shaped robots have entered mass production. At the heart of RoboFab is Digit, Agility's flagship robot, built to operate in any environment designed for people, including warehouses, distribution centres, and logistics hubs.
What Is Digit and What Can It Do?
Digit is a bipedal, multi-purpose humanoid robot engineered to tackle repetitive, physically demanding tasks that are difficult to automate with conventional fixed-arm systems. Its upright human form allows it to navigate standard commercial environments without infrastructure modifications: it can walk through doorways, climb stairs, and operate machinery designed for human workers.
Initial commercial applications focus on bulk material handling within warehouses and distribution centres, where Digit works alongside human teams. Agility's vision, however, extends well beyond that: Digit is designed to eventually address a broad range of workforce challenges, from injury-causing repetitive strain tasks to roles left vacant by labour shortages. Full details of Digit's capabilities are on the official Agility Robotics RoboFab page.
Production Scale and Economic Impact
RoboFab opened in late 2023 with an initial production commitment of hundreds of Digit units, scaling toward the 10,000-per-year capacity as demand grows. Agility's Agility Partner Program gives early commercial customers first access to Digit deliveries. General market availability was targeted for 2025.
The Salem facility creates more than 500 skilled jobs across manufacturing, robotics engineering, and support functions, making RoboFab a significant economic driver for the region as well as a technological milestone. As IEEE Spectrum notes in its analysis of the factory, the facility positions Agility as the first mover in an industry that many analysts believe will be one of the largest emerging technology markets of the 2030s.
Why Humanoid Form Matters
Agility's co-founder and CEO Damion Shelton described the opening of RoboFab as a pivotal moment in the history of robotics: the beginning of mass production of commercial humanoid robots. The choice of human form is deliberate. Because the built environment and most industrial processes are designed around human proportions and human movement, a robot that can navigate those spaces without modification has a far larger addressable market than a specialised fixed-arm system.
Digit was designed from the ground up to address the workforce gaps created by an ageing population, rising rates of workplace injury, and the increasing difficulty of attracting workers to physically demanding roles in logistics and manufacturing.
Photo: Agility Robotics
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