Oregon State University Advantage

OSU Faculty Innovator Award Summary

The Faculty Innovator Award, sponsored by OSU Advantage, honors an outstanding Oregon State University inventor who has made a contribution leading to commercialization that significantly impacts their field and society. The award is open to any current OSU faculty, emeritus or retired faculty who has submitted an invention disclosure through the Advantage Office and who are actively engaged with commercializing an OSU innovation.

Award Winner

Jonathan Hurst, Professor of Robotics at OSU (Chief Robot Officer at Agility Robotics), has been honored with the prestigious 2024 Faculty Innovator Award. This recognition celebrates his contributions to the commercialization of human-centric robots, enabling machines to assist humans by performing repetitive or hazardous tasks.

Hurst's research at Oregon State University began with developing ATRIAS, the first robot to replicate human walking dynamics. Building on that success, he and his team designed Cassie, a bipedal robot used for applied research. This foundational work at Oregon State, with support from OSU Advantage’s Accelerator programs, led to the creation of Agility Robotics. As the company moved toward commercialization, Hurst and his team licensed their research through OSU Advantage’s IP & Licensing to bring human-centric robots to market.

Today, Agility Robotics works with Amazon to deploy bipedal robots like Digit in logistics and warehousing. The company is also building a 70,000-square-foot factory in Salem, Oregon, which will create up to 500 jobs and produce 10,000 robots per year once fully operational.

Notable achievements and highlights in Jonathan Hurst's career

• Holds a B.S. in mechanical engineering and M.S. and Ph.D. in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University.
• Lead inventor of Cassie, developed at Oregon State University as a research robot used to explore machine learning and dynamic balancing.
• Founder, Agility Robotics, a leader in bipedal humanoid robots.
• Developed Digit, a commercialized bipedal robot designed for logistics and industrial applications.
• Secured $190 million in investment from major backers, including Amazon, to scale the production of humanoid robots.
• Agility Robotics launched RoboFab, a first-of-its-kind facility in Salem, Oregon, dedicated to mass-producing humanoid robots.

You can learn more about Jonathan Hurst’s work by visiting the Agility Robotics website.