- Co-founder and Chief Robot Officer, Agility Robotics1
- Professor of Robotics and co-founder of the Robotics Institute (at Oregon State since 2008), Oregon State University2
Jonathan Hurst is a co-founder and the Chief Robot Officer of Agility Robotics, which builds the Digit humanoid robot, and a Professor of Robotics at Oregon State University, where Hurst co-founded the university's Robotics Institute. Hurst's research studies legged locomotion, combining hardware design with machine learning and traditional control.12
At a glance
- Current roles
- Co-founder and Chief Robot Officer +1 more
- Company
- Agility Robotics
- Sector
- Company
- Fields
- Robotics, Reinforcement learning
- Work listed
- 2
- Honors
- 3
- Sources cited
- 4
- Profile reviewed
Career
Hurst has been on the Oregon State University faculty since 2008. Agility Robotics was founded in 2015 out of the Dynamic Robotics Lab at Oregon State, and Hurst is listed among its co-founders.12
Agility's leadership page lists Hurst as Chief Robot Officer, with a current focus on physical AI for locomotion and manipulation applied to Digit in logistics warehouses. At Oregon State, Hurst is a Professor of Robotics in Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering and a co-founder of the Robotics Institute.12
Research
Hurst's university research looks at the science and engineering of legged locomotion, from numerical studies and animal data to theoretical models and physical robots for walking and running. More recent work merges machine learning with traditional control to produce highly dynamic gaits.2
With co-authors, Hurst wrote papers on learning bipedal gaits through periodic reward composition and on blind stair traversal, both using reinforcement learning trained in simulation and transferred to a real biped.34
Work and contributions
Digit humanoid robot
Co-founder of the company that built Digit, which Agility describes as first released in 2017 as a research humanoid and redesigned in 2023 for industrial customers.1
Sim-to-Real Learning of All Common Bipedal Gaits via Periodic Reward Composition
Co-author of a 2020 paper on training bipedal walking, running and other gaits in simulation with reinforcement learning and transferring them to a physical robot.3
Timeline
- Joined the faculty of Oregon State University.2
- Agility Robotics, which Hurst co-founded, was founded out of the Dynamic Robotics Lab at Oregon State.1
- Agility's Cassie biped took its first steps.1
- Agility released Digit 1, its first complete humanoid built for researchers.1
- Co-authored a paper on sim-to-real learning of all common bipedal gaits.3
- Co-authored a paper on blind bipedal stair traversal via sim-to-real reinforcement learning.4
- Agility redesigned Digit for industrial customers.1
Honors and recognition
Where they work
- Agility Robotics 4 people in the wiki
Related people
- Peggy JohnsonAlso at Agility Robotics
- Damion SheltonAlso at Agility Robotics
- Pras VelagapudiAlso at Agility Robotics
- Bob McGrewRobotics · Reinforcement learning
- Chelsea FinnRobotics · Reinforcement learning
- Tuomas HaarnojaReinforcement learning · Robotics
- Pieter AbbeelRobotics · Reinforcement learning
- Joelle PineauReinforcement learning · Robotics
- Justin FuReinforcement learning · Robotics
- Deepak PathakRobotics · Reinforcement learning
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References
4 sources · profile reviewed Oct 21, 2026 · data updated Oct 21, 2026
- About Agility Robotics — leadership and company timeline
- Jonathan Hurst — College of Engineering, Oregon State University
- Sim-to-Real Learning of All Common Bipedal Gaits via Periodic Reward Composition (arXiv 2011.01387)
- Blind Bipedal Stair Traversal via Sim-to-Real Reinforcement Learning (arXiv 2105.08328)