NEWS
Agility Robotics and FORT expand humanoid safety system for Digit 5
Agility Robotics has deepened its safety push for humanoid robots, signing a strategic partnership with FORT Robotics to extend protection beyond the machine as Digit 5 moves towards commercial deployment.
The companies said the agreement would expand a multi-year relationship into a three-part safety architecture spanning a safety pendant, onboard communications and off-robot interfaces. At its centre is a jointly developed Offboard Safety Bridge designed to connect Digit 5 with external safety systems operating across industrial facilities.
The move targets one of the biggest barriers to large-scale humanoid deployment: proving robots can work reliably alongside people in warehouses, factories and logistics operations.
Digit 5 will be Agility’ s first humanoid engineered for cooperatively safe work, combining safe human detection, safety cues and motion control with FORT’ s offboard communications infrastructure. Earlier Digit generations have logged more than 65,000 operating hours, including deployments with Schaeffler, GXO and Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada.
FORT has previously supplied technology for Digit, including a pendant sled integrating emergency-stop and enabling-device functionality. The pendant provides a manual safety override during setup, maintenance or unexpected events while Digit operates autonomously during normal work.
Under the expanded partnership, FORT will move beyond component supply into joint hardware development, solutions engineering, regulatory compliance and deployment support.
Agility CTO Pras Velagapudi said the Offboard Safety Bridge would help create safety infrastructure capable of responding to inputs from both the robot and its surrounding environment.
The companies expect the architecture to support Digit 5 deployments and future platform generations at industrial customer sites.
Infosys and Columbia University launch enterprise AI research centre
Infosys has teamed with Columbia University to launch an enterprise AI research centre aimed at turning advances in generative and agentic AI into deployable business systems.
The Infosys Topaz-Columbia University Enterprise AI Center will be led by Columbia Engineering and work with Infosys customers on AI research, co-innovation and responsible deployment at enterprise scale.
The initiative pushes Infosys deeper into the race to commercialise AI research as businesses move beyond experimentation towards systems capable of reshaping workflows, customer interactions and decision-making.
Research will focus on three areas: AI-first experiences and processes, responsible and sustainable AI and AI for marketing. The programme will examine how natural interfaces including voice and free-form text can replace layers of existing business processes while exploring regulatory, cybersecurity, ethical and energy-consumption challenges.
Marketing research will target hyper-personalisation, agent-driven campaign optimisation, predictive analytics and generative content.
The centre will also run workshops, client co-innovation sessions and research collaborations designed to connect Columbia’ s academic expertise with Infosys’ Topaz portfolio of AI services, platforms and solutions.
Garud Iyengar, Director of Columbia Data Science Institute and founding director of the new centre, said the partnership would advance research while giving students and enterprises opportunities to co-create intelligent systems.
Infosys chief delivery officer Satish HC said the collaboration was intended to develop AI systems that were responsible, scalable and commercially relevant.
The move strengthens Infosys’ academic research network as technology services groups compete to translate rapidly developing AI models into enterprise deployments across industries and complex operating environments.
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