Just when you thought the humanoid robot party couldn’t get any more crowded, Germany’s Agile Robots SE has officially pulled the curtain back on Agile ONE, its inaugural entry into the bipedal workforce. Unveiled on November 19, 2025, the Munich-based company is positioning Agile ONE not as some flashy, academic flight of fancy, but as a “reliable co-worker” meticulously engineered to tackle the nitty-gritty, often unglamorous, yet utterly essential tasks of manufacturing and logistics. The company is, rather cleverly, betting its chips on a concept it terms “Physical AI,” aiming to forge intelligent robots that can perceive, reason, and act with aplomb in the wonderfully messy, gloriously unpredictable physical world of a factory floor.
Built to human scale, the Agile ONE stands a respectable 5ft 8in (174 cm) tall, weighs in at 69 kg, and can gracefully carry a rather impressive 20 kg payload while zipping around at a brisk 2.0 m/s. Its hardware boasts dexterous five-fingered hands, thoughtfully equipped with force and tactile sensors, allowing for both the finesse of delicate manipulation and the brute force of a firm grip. The robot’s considerable intelligence is driven by a layered AI model, rigorously trained on one of Europe’s largest industrial datasets – a move clearly intended to give it a distinct home-turf advantage in comprehending the intricate nuances of real-world production environments. For its squishier, human colleagues, intuitive features like responsive “eyes” and a chest-mounted display provide real-time feedback, making interactions a tad less, shall we say, robotic.
Agile Robots, birthed in 2018 by astute researchers from the German Aerospace Center, is keeping a tight rein on the entire supply chain and plans to manufacture the humanoid in-house in Bavaria, with production slated to roll off the lines in early 2026. This unwavering commitment to German engineering and manufacturing is a rather bold statement of intent in a market increasingly populated by North American and Asian competitors. The company already boasts a rather impressive footprint, with over 20,000 systems cunningly installed across the automotive and electronics sectors.
Why is this important?
The launch of Agile ONE signals another serious contender, squarely focused on industry, entering the increasingly competitive humanoid robotics field. By emphasising “Physical AI” meticulously trained on specific European industrial data, Agile Robots is carving out its own niche from the pack, differentiating itself from competitors who may be pursuing more general-purpose intelligence. The decision to manufacture in Germany provides a strategic mooring right in the pulsating heart of European industry and could well be the catnip for customers who prioritise local supply chains and solid, no-nonsense engineering standards. While, let’s face it, timelines in this game are often more aspirational than concrete, a concrete production start date of early 2026 slams Agile ONE squarely onto the industry’s radar as a commercially viable system that demands our undivided attention, dialling up the heat on everyone from Tesla to Figure AI.
