Mikhail Jones is an American roboticist and co-founder of Agility Robotics, where he serves as vice president of software engineering. He was a graduate student of Jonathan Hurst at Oregon State University and the lead developer of the control software behind the ATRIAS bipedal-locomotion research platform that anchored the technical lineage of the company's Digit commercial humanoid robot. As of May 2026 he leads the software-engineering organization at Agility Robotics during the production-ramp phase at the Salem RoboFab manufacturing facility.
At a glance
- Education: Bachelor of Science from Oregon State University; Master of Science in robotics from Oregon State University (2011 to 2014).
- Current role: Co-founder and Vice President of Software Engineering at Agility Robotics since 2015.
- Notable prior affiliations: Faculty Research Assistant, Oregon State University Dynamic Robotics Laboratory, October 2011 to December 2016; ATRIAS control-software lead developer.
- Key contributions: Lead developer of the ATRIAS bipedal-locomotion control software; co-founder of Agility Robotics; continuing software-engineering leadership across the Cassie research platform and the Digit commercial humanoid.
- LinkedIn: mikhail-jones-5674a22b
Origins
Jones entered Oregon State University for undergraduate study and completed a Bachelor of Science degree, then continued at the institution for graduate study in robotics. He entered Hurst's Dynamic Robotics Laboratory as a graduate student in 2011, the period during which the laboratory was constructing ATRIAS, the first bipedal robot to reproduce human walking gait dynamics under the spring-mass model that Hurst's PhD research had framed.
Jones completed a Master of Science in robotics at Oregon State University in 2014. He continued at the laboratory as a Faculty Research Assistant from October 2011 through December 2016, overlapping with the ATRIAS demonstration period that culminated in the platform's appearance at the DARPA Robotics Challenge in Pomona, California in May 2015, and with the early Cassie development period that began in 2016.
Career
Jones served as the lead developer of the ATRIAS control software during the Oregon State research period. The control-software role was structurally important to the platform's demonstration value because the spring-mass-model dynamics that ATRIAS was built to reproduce required real-time control-system architecture capable of managing the compliant-leg actuation at frequencies that supported stable walking and running. ATRIAS published several walking and running demonstrations through 2015 and 2016 that established the platform's place in the bipedal-locomotion research literature.
Agility Robotics was founded in 2015 as a commercial spinout from the Dynamic Robotics Laboratory. Jones co-founded the company alongside Hurst (the academic and technical co-founder) and Damion Shelton (the chief-executive co-founder, Hurst's Carnegie Mellon graduate-school classmate). Jones's structural role from the founding was to lead the software-engineering organization, translating the ATRIAS-era control software lineage into the commercial Cassie platform and subsequently into Digit, the commercial humanoid that built on the Cassie-derived bipedal architecture by adding a torso, arms, and end-effectors.
Jones has continued as vice president of software engineering through the company's transition from research-platform-vendor (Cassie sales to approximately a dozen academic robotics groups between 2017 and 2019) to commercial-humanoid-platform-vendor (Digit production deployment at the Amazon Sumner warehouse since October 2023, at GXO Logistics, and at adjacent warehouse-and-logistics customers). The software-engineering organization is responsible for the locomotion control stack that anchors the company's technical positioning, including the perception-and-manipulation control systems that distinguish Digit from competitor humanoid platforms relying on different software-stack approaches.
The company's May 2023 leadership expansion announcement, which placed Melonee Wise in the newly created chief technology officer position and established Hurst's chief robot officer title, reorganized the senior-technical leadership structure around Jones's vice-president-of-software-engineering role. The reorganization preserved the founding software-engineering leadership while adding the executive-CTO position at the chief-technology-officer level, reflecting the production-scale-up requirements of the post-Series-B period.
Affiliations
- Oregon State University: Bachelor of Science undergraduate; Master of Science in robotics, 2011 to 2014; Faculty Research Assistant, Dynamic Robotics Laboratory, October 2011 to December 2016.
- Agility Robotics: Co-founder and Vice President of Software Engineering, 2015 to present.
Notable contributions
- ATRIAS control-software lead (2011 to 2016). Lead developer of the control software behind the first bipedal robot to reproduce human walking gait dynamics under the spring-mass model, developed in the Oregon State University Dynamic Robotics Laboratory.
- Agility Robotics co-founding (2015). Co-founder of the Oregon State University Dynamic Robotics Laboratory commercial spinout, alongside Jonathan Hurst and Damion Shelton.
- Cassie research-platform software (2017 to 2019). Software-engineering leadership for the second-generation bipedal-research platform sold to approximately a dozen academic robotics groups, including the architecture that supported the world-record 100-meter dash demonstration.
- Digit commercial-platform software (2019 to present). Software-engineering leadership for the production humanoid platform deployed at the Amazon Sumner warehouse since October 2023 and at adjacent warehouse-and-logistics customers.
- "Walking and Running with Passive Compliance" (May 2018). Co-author of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine paper documenting the ATRIAS and early Cassie locomotion demonstrations, alongside Christian Hubicki, Andy Abate, Patrick Clary, Siavash Rezazadeh, and other Dynamic Robotics Laboratory researchers.
Open questions
- Control-stack versus foundation-model architecture. Agility Robotics' software-engineering organization, which Jones leads, builds the locomotion-and-manipulation control stack in-house rather than relying on partner foundation-model approaches. Whether the vertical-specialist control-stack approach continues to produce better warehouse-task performance than the foundation-model approaches at Figure AI and Apptronik is the most material technical-architecture question for the company's medium-term competitive position.
- Software-organization scaling. The production-ramp phase at the RoboFab facility will require the software-engineering organization to scale alongside the manufacturing-and-deployment organization. Whether Jones's founding-engineering leadership style scales effectively across an expanded organization, or whether the company's software-engineering structure shifts materially through 2026 and 2027, will indicate the durability of the founding technical-leadership pattern.
- Next-generation platform software architecture. The Cassie-to-Digit architectural transition from 2019 retained much of the bipedal-locomotion software lineage while adding torso-and-arm manipulation. Whether the next-generation Digit successor platform requires a meaningful software-architecture transition, on what timeline, and led by what mix of legacy-engineering and new-engineering leadership, is an open product-side question.
Sources
- Mikhail Jones LinkedIn profile. Career history covering the Oregon State graduate-and-research period and the Agility Robotics vice-president-of-software-engineering role.
- Mikhail Jones at The Org. The Org record of his vice-president-of-software-engineering position at Agility Robotics.
- Cassie Steps into the limelight. Oregon State College of Engineering coverage of the Cassie platform with reference to Jones's software-engineering work.
- Agility Robotics Wikipedia entry. Wikipedia profile of the company identifying Jones as a co-founder and the lead developer of the ATRIAS control software.
- Report: Agility Robotics' Business Breakdown & Founding Story. Contrary Research deep-dive on the company's founding story, technical lineage, and commercial trajectory.
- Companion profile: Agility Robotics for the commercial entity that Jones co-founded as part of the Dynamic Robotics Laboratory commercial spinout.
