Figure is testing Figure 02’s efficacy for helping out in the kitchen and picking up around the house.

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Today, Figure is introducing the newest, slimmest, shiniest, and least creatively named next generation of its humanoid robot: Figure 02. According to the press release, Figure 02 is the result of “a ground-up hardware and software redesign” and is “the highest performing humanoid robot,” which may even be true for some arbitrary value of “performing.” Also notable is that Figure has been actively testing robots with BMW at a manufacturing plant in Spartanburg, S.C., where the new humanoid has been performing “data collection and use case training.”

The rest of the press release is pretty much, “Hey, check out our new robot!” And you’ll get all of the content in the release by watching the videos. What you won’t get from the videos is any additional info about the robot. But we sent along some questions to Figure about these videos, and have a few answers from Michael Rose, director of controls, and Vadim Chernyak, director of hardware.

First, the trailer:

How many parts does Figure 02 have, and is this all of them?

Figure: A couple hundred unique parts and a couple thousand parts total. No, this is not all of them.

Does Figure 02 make little Figure logos with every step?

Figure: If the surface is soft enough, yes.

Swappable legs! Was that hard to do, or easier to do because you only have to make one leg? Figure: We chose to make swappable legs to help with manufacturing.

Is the battery pack swappable too?

Figure: Our battery is swappable, but it is not a quick swap procedure.

What’s that squishy-looking stuff on the back of Figure 02’s knees and in its elbow joints?

Figure: These are soft stops which limit the range of motion in a controlled way and prevent robot pinch points

Where’d you hide that thumb motor?

Figure: The thumb is now fully contained in the hand.

Tell me about the “skin” on the neck!

Figure: The skin is a soft fabric which is able to keep a clean seamless look even as the robot moves its head.

And here’s the reveal video:

When Figure 02’s head turns, its body turns too, and its arms move. Is that necessary, or aesthetic?

Figure: Aesthetic.

The upper torso and shoulders seem very narrow compared to other humanoids. Why is that?

Figure: We find it essential to package the robot to be of similar proportions to a human. This allows us to complete our target use cases and fit into our environment more easily.

What can you tell me about Figure 02’s walking gait?

Figure: The robot is using a model predictive controller to determine footstep locations and forces required to maintain balance and follow the desired robot trajectory.

How much runtime do you get from 2.25 kilowatt-hours doing the kinds of tasks that we see in the video?

Figure: We are targeting a 5-hour run time for our product.

Slick, but also a little sinister?Figure

This thing looks slick. I’d say that it’s maybe a little too far on the sinister side for a robot intended to work around humans, but the industrial design is badass and the packaging is excellent, with the vast majority of the wiring now integrated within the robot’s skins and flexible materials covering joints that are typically left bare. Figure, if you remember, raised a US $675 million Series B that valued the company at $2.6 billion, and somehow the look of this robot seems appropriate to that.

I do still have some questions about Figure 02, such as where the interesting foot design came from and whether a 16-degree-of-freedom hand is really worth it in the near term. It’s also worth mentioning that Figure seems to have a fair number of Figure 02 robots running around—at least five units at its California headquarters, plus potentially a couple of more at the BMW Spartanburg manufacturing facility.

I also want to highlight this boilerplate at the end of the release: “our humanoid is designed to perform human-like tasks within the workforce and in the home.” We are very, very far away from a humanoid robot in the home, but I appreciate that it’s still an explicit goal that Figure is trying to achieve. Because I want one.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.

RoboCup 2024: 17–22 July 2024, EINDHOVEN, NETHERLANDS

ICRA@40: 23–26 September 2024, ROTTERDAM, NETHERLANDS

IROS 2024: 14–18 October 2024, ABU DHABI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

ICSR 2024: 23–26 October 2024, ODENSE, DENMARK

Cybathlon 2024: 25–27 October 2024, ZURICH

Enjoy today’s videos!

In this video, you see the start of 1X’s development of an advanced AI system that chains simple tasks into complex actions using voice commands, allowing seamless multi-robot control and remote operation. By starting with single-task models, we ensure smooth transitions to more powerful unified models, ultimately aiming to automate high-level actions using AI.

This video does not contain teleoperation, computer graphics, cuts, video speedups, or scripted trajectory playback. It’s all controlled via neural networks.

[ 1X ]

As the old adage goes, one cannot claim to be a true man without a visit to the Great Wall of China. XBot-L, a full-sized humanoid robot developed by Robot Era, recently acquitted itself well in a walk along sections of the Great Wall.

[ Robot Era ]

The paper presents a novel rotary wing platform, that is capable of folding and expanding its wings during flight. Our source of inspiration came from birds’ ability to fold their wings to navigate through small spaces and dive. The design of the rotorcraft is based on the monocopter platform, which is inspired by the flight of Samara seeds.

[ AirLab ]

We present a variable stiffness robotic skin (VSRS), a concept that integrates stiffness-changing capabilities, sensing, and actuation into a single, thin modular robot design. Reconfiguring, reconnecting, and reshaping VSRSs allows them to achieve new functions both on and in the absence of a host body.

[ Yale Faboratory ]

Heimdall is a new rover design for the 2024 University Rover Challenge (URC). This video shows highlights of Heimdall’s trip during the four missions at URC 2024.

Heimdall features a split body design with whegs (wheel legs), and a drill for sub-surface sample collection. It also has the ability to manipulate a variety of objects, collect surface samples, and perform onboard spectrometry and chemical tests.

[ WVU ]

I think this may be the first time I’ve seen an autonomous robot using a train? This one is delivering lunch boxes!

[ JSME ]

The AI system used identifies and separates red apples from green apples, after which a robotic arm picks up the red apples identified with a qb SoftHand Industry and gently places them in a basket.

My favorite part is the magnetic apple stem system.

[ QB Robotics ]

DexNex (v0, June 2024) is an anthropomorphic teleoperation testbed for dexterous manipulation at the Center for Robotics and Biosystems at Northwestern University. DexNex recreates human upper-limb functionality through a near 1-to-1 mapping between Operator movements and Avatar actions.

Motion of the Operator’s arms, hands, fingers, and head are fed forward to the Avatar, while fingertip pressures, finger forces, and camera images are fed back to the Operator. DexNex aims to minimize the latency of each subsystem to provide a seamless, immersive, and responsive user experience. Future research includes gaining a better understanding of the criticality of haptic and vision feedback for different manipulation tasks; providing arm-level grounded force feedback; and using machine learning to transfer dexterous skills from the human to the robot.

[ Northwestern ]

Sometimes the best path isn’t the smoothest or straightest surface, it’s the path that’s actually meant to be a path.

[ RaiLab ]

Fulfilling a school requirement by working in a Romanian locomotive factory one week each month, Daniela Rus learned to operate “machines that help us make things.” Appreciation for the practical side of math and science stuck with Daniela, who is now Director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).

[ MIT ]

For AI to achieve its full potential, non-experts need to be let into the development process, says Rumman Chowdhury, CEO and cofounder of Humane Intelligence. She tells the story of farmers fighting for the right to repair their own AI-powered tractors (which some manufacturers actually made illegal), proposing everyone should have the ability to report issues, patch updates or even retrain AI technologies for their specific uses.

[ TED ]