“You know what, that was one of our very first use cases that we explored with Ford. And there's a nice video online of our very first digit robot getting out of a vehicle, walking up to someone's front porch, and dropping a package there. Stairs and everything. So we could do that, like, this was seven years ago, something like that.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading:
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More from Professor Jonathan Hurst
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Hurst: AI perception for robotics is all but solved
“Perception is incredibly difficult, and the fact that perception is all but solved at this point is a really, really huge inflection point.”
Professor Jonathan HurstJul 29, 2026▶ 49:57The $1/Hour Robot Is Coming: Four Industry Leaders Explain What’s Next
PredictionNot checkable as stated
Hurst predicts robots will soon perform general, useful tasks
“AI is really enabling that much more broad you know, context awareness for these robots, so people can see that this is going to be useful, generally doing many useful things very soon.”
Professor Jonathan HurstJul 29, 2026▶ 50:10The $1/Hour Robot Is Coming: Four Industry Leaders Explain What’s Next
Insight
Hurst: Simulation gaps make physical real-world robot practice indispensable
“But there's always a massive sim to real gap. Things aren't simulated perfectly. And then, you know, as you pick up something in the real world and there's wave dynamics and there's condensation on the glass and the dynamics of the robot are not perfectly mode…”
Professor Jonathan HurstJul 29, 2026▶ 53:05The $1/Hour Robot Is Coming: Four Industry Leaders Explain What’s Next
PredictionOpen · timeframe Dec 2026
Hurst: Agility Robotics will release barrier-free Digit V5 this year
“And Digit V-Five, which is coming out later this year, is the first time that a humanoid robot, a robot which is balancing, can step out of a work cell and does not need a physical barrier between the robot and the person to maintain safety in this warehouse.”
Professor Jonathan HurstJul 29, 2026▶ 56:16The $1/Hour Robot Is Coming: Four Industry Leaders Explain What’s Next
PredictionOpen · timeframe Jul 2031
Hurst: Humanoid robots will reach $20k-$40k at 100k unit scale
“They will at some point. It's gonna need to go through the scaling and have 100,000 robots out there before that actually is real.”
Professor Jonathan HurstJul 29, 2026▶ 58:38The $1/Hour Robot Is Coming: Four Industry Leaders Explain What’s Next
Insight
Hurst: Humanoid robots belong in human environments, not lights-out factories
“At that point, it's probably specialty automation doing those things, because it's just twenty-four-seven doing it, and a humanoid doesn't make sense. It's not the most efficient thing for that specific task. A humanoid is useful for walking into human environ…”
Professor Jonathan HurstJul 29, 2026▶ 1:01:36The $1/Hour Robot Is Coming: Four Industry Leaders Explain What’s Next
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