Jonathan Hurst

Jonathan W. Hurst is Chief Robot Officer and co-founder of Agility Robotics, and Professor and co-founder of the Oregon State University Robotics Institute. He holds a B.S. in mechanical engineering and an M.S. and Ph.D. in robotics, all from Carnegie Mellon University. His career-long research focus is to enable robots to interact physically with the world as well as people do, creating hardware and control approaches that enable the compliance, dexterity, and mobility we see all around us in the animal world. Today, that focus is on Physical AI, a powerful new set of tools to enable complex locomanipulation behaviors. This work is applied on Digit, the first humanoid to be commercially deployed, doing work in logistics warehouses. These are early steps toward robots going where people go, generating greater productivity across the economy, and improving quality of life for all.