Humanoid Deployment
Toyota Canada signs humanoid robot deal with Agility
After a year-long pilot at its Woodstock, Ontario facility, Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada has signed a commercial Robots-as-a-Service agreement with Agility Robotics, deploying seven Digit humanoids on the assembly line this April.
In the competitive arena of automotive manufacturing, where marginal gains in efficiency and worker safety can determine whether a plant thrives or merely survives, announcements of new technology deployments arrive with some regularity. Most pass without ceremony.
The agreement struck between Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada (TMMC) and Agility Robotics, formalised on February 19 2026, carries rather more significance than the average procurement decision. It marks the first commercial deployment of humanoid robots in Canadian automotive production, and it arrives not as a speculative leap of faith, but as the conclusion of a year-long, rigorously structured evaluation process.
A year in the making
TMMC did not arrive at this agreement hastily. The company ran a year-long pilot and testing period with Agility Robotics that encompassed development work, proof-of-concept exercises, and a live onsite pilot at its Woodstock, Ontario plant. Three Digit robots were allocated to that initial phase. The outcome was evidently sufficient to satisfy the exacting standards one would expect from Toyota's largest manufacturing operation outside of Japan, a facility whose annual production capacity exceeds 500,000 vehicles and which has built more than 11 million vehicles since opening in 1988.
"Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada has long been a leader in automotive manufacturing innovation," said Tim Hollander, President of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada. "After evaluating a number of robots, we are excited to deploy Digit to improve the team member experience and further increase operational efficiency in our manufacturing facilities."
The language Hollander uses is revealing. The emphasis on the team member experience, not merely on throughput or cost reduction, reflects Toyota's longstanding "Respect for People" philosophy, a principle the company has applied consistently across its global operations. The fact that a humanoid robot deployment is being framed primarily through that lens, rather than through displacement rhetoric, says something meaningful about the maturity with which TMMC is approaching this technology.
Agility Robotics' humanoid 'Digit' brings AI-driven perception and industrial-grade manipulation to automotive assembly
Seven robots and a tugger
The task assigned to Digit at Woodstock is, by design, unglamorous. The robot's job is to service an automated tugger, removing empty totes of automotive parts from it and loading full ones back on in their place.
It is exactly the kind of task that most plant managers would struggle to describe as stimulating, yet which must be performed reliably, repetitively, and without error across long production shifts. In facilities operating at the scale of TMMC's Woodstock plant, the cumulative physical burden of such work on human employees is far from trivial.
Seven Digit robots are scheduled to begin deployment in early April, a meaningful step up from the three that participated in the pilot. That incremental scaling, from three to seven units, is itself instructive. It suggests that TMMC is not treating this as a vanity exercise in automation theatre, but as a considered operational commitment. The agreement has been structured as a Robots-as-a-Service arrangement, a commercial model that transfers the burden of hardware ownership, maintenance, and software updates from the customer to the vendor. For a manufacturer operating at TMMC's scale, that model offers meaningful flexibility as the technology continues to evolve.
The wider humanoid moment in automotive
Agility Robotics is not operating in a vacuum. The humanoid robot sector has attracted serious capital and serious attention over the past two years, with competitors ranging from Figure AI and 1X Technologies to Tesla's Optimus programme all moving towards commercial deployment.
What distinguishes Agility's position, for now at least, is its track record with major industrial customers. TMMC joins a roster that already includes GXO, the world's largest pure-play contract logistics provider, Schaeffler, and Amazon, each of which has moved beyond pilot agreements into some form of active deployment.
The automotive sector, with its demanding production rhythms, narrow tolerances for error, and unionised workforces alert to the implications of automation, represents a particular test for humanoid robotics. It is not the most obvious entry point. Yet the logic is clear enough.
With our next generation of Digit, we will be the first company to deliver the first cooperatively safe humanoid robot to work alongside people, allowing companies like Toyota to scale their use of humanoids well beyond what is possible today
Plants like TMMC's Woodstock facility run around the clock, and the most physically demanding, repetitive roles are precisely those where human turnover is highest and recruitment most difficult. Against the backdrop of a global labour shortage that shows little sign of abating, the economic case for deploying robots in those roles does not require elaborate justification.
"Toyota is one of the premier companies in the world; one with a long history of innovation and success, so it's a privilege to join forces to integrate humanoid robotic solutions like Digit into automotive production," said Peggy Johnson, Agility Robotics' Chief Executive Officer.
"I look forward to continuing our work with Toyota to identify all the ways that Digit can help the employees working at their production facilities. With our next generation of Digit, we will be the first company to deliver the first cooperatively safe humanoid robot to work alongside people, allowing companies like Toyota to scale their use of humanoids well beyond what is possible today."
Johnson's reference to the next generation of Digit is the more forward-looking element of her statement. A robot that is merely functional is one thing; a robot certified as cooperatively safe to operate in close proximity to human workers, without physical barriers or restricted zones, is a substantially more demanding engineering and regulatory achievement. If Agility delivers on that promise, it would alter the calculus of humanoid deployment across the industry considerably.
Beyond the tote: what comes next
The two companies have made clear that tote-handling is a starting point rather than a terminus. TMMC and Agility intend to assess further use cases where robots and artificial intelligence could support automotive production more broadly, with a particular focus on the most ergonomically demanding and repetitive assembly-line tasks. The phrasing in the joint announcement is appropriately measured: the companies will "explore" and "assess," language that signals ambition without overpromising.
That caution is worth respecting. Automotive assembly is an environment that has defeated many a technology that looked transformative on the pilot-plant floor. The complexity of the production environment, the variability of components, the pace of line operations, and the sensitivity of labour relations all impose constraints that do not always appear in vendor demonstrations. TMMC's decision to proceed through a structured, year-long evaluation before committing to a commercial agreement suggests it understands those constraints well.
Humanoid robots are entering automotive production not through the front gate but through the loading bay, starting with the tasks that are least glamorous, most physically taxing, and most resistant to conventional automation. If that approach proves durable, it may turn out to be the most effective path of all.
