Employees at an Amazon.com Inc. warehouse near Seattle recently got a glimpse of the future of work: a 5-foot-9-inch robot that resembles a human, walks like a bird and has glowing white eyes. Called Digit, the machine is configured for one basic task: plucking empty yellow bins off a shelf and ferrying them several feet to a conveyor. Then doing it again. Over and over and over.

The robot, in the testing phase, probably won’t transform the logistics industry anytime soon. But it’s a major technological leap forward, and it positions its maker, Agility Robotics Inc., at the vanguard of an effort to build machines that can toil alongside human workers. Where some robotics startups wax futuristic, imagining their machines ushering in an age of abundance or helping colonize planets, Tangent, Oregon-based Agility is resolutely down-to-earth. It aims to build 10,000 robots a year and deploy them to warehouses and storerooms all over the world.