Agile Robots: Rethinking Factory Automation

In the factory hall of the not-so-distant future, a new worker has joined the team. It hauls crates from the warehouse, passes tools to colleagues, and assembles components on its own. It never tires, never loses focus and combines dexterity with a remarkable capacity to learn. Its name is Agile ONE, and it’s a humanoid robot designed and manufactured in Germany.

Its maker, Agile Robots, holds the distinction of being Germany's first robotics unicorn: the company achieved a valuation over one billion US dollars all the way back in 2021.

For Peggy Görlitz, robotics expert at Germany Trade & Invest (GTAI), the company's rapid ascent since founding in 2018 is part of a broader trend. “Agile Robots is a textbook example of what makes Germany such a compelling location for deep tech investment: world-class research, a highly skilled workforce, a strong industrial base, and a reliable regulatory environment.”

Read this article to find out:

1. About Germany’s first robotics unicorn.

2. How Agile Robots was “born from a hand”.

3. Why Munich is the ideal base for the next generation of industrial AI.

The company is a pioneer in bringing so-called “Physical AI” (industrial artificial intelligence) into real-world manufacturing environments. Powered by advanced AI control systems, its robots operate with a high degree of autonomy. From its base in Germany, with flagship products like Agile ONE, the company is positioning itself to capture a significant share of the fast-growing global robotics market.

For decades, industrial robots have excelled at single, repetitive tasks but struggled when conditions changed. Humanoids address that limitation directly. They can navigate factory environments designed for human workers and take on an ever-broader range of human

tasks – made possible by dexterous hands and increasingly capable AI.

Agile ONE is, in fact, just the most visible element of a comprehensive Physical AI system, explains Agile Robots Executive Director Rory Sexton: “Physical AI will become the next industrial revolution, with intelligence applied to entire factories rather than to individual robots alone. Eight years on, we've come a long way towards making that real.”

The company was founded in Munich in 2018 as a spin-off of the publicly funded German Aerospace Center (DLR). It grew out of research conducted there by founder and CEO Dr. Zhaopeng Chen – including the development of an innovative robotic hand. The Agile ONE robotic hand possesses almost the same range of motion of a healthy adult hand. It features 21 joints equipped with force-torque sensors and tactile sensors integrated into the fingertips, enabling it to switch fluidly between tasks, from fine manipulation and power gripping to the use of tools.