Figure Promises First General Purpose Humanoid Robot

Today, a robotics startup known as Figure is unveiling “the world’s first commercially viable general purpose humanoid robot,” known as Figure 01. Shown within the rendering above, Figure 01 doesn’t but exist, however in response to this morning’s press launch, it can “have the ability to think, learn, and interact with its environment and is designed for initial deployment into the workforce to address labor shortages and over time lead the way in eliminating the need for unsafe and undesirable jobs.” Which sounds nice, when (or if) it occurs.

We are usually skeptical of bulletins like these, the place an organization comes out of stealth with bold guarantees and a few spectacular renderings however little precise {hardware} to display together with them. What caught our eye in Figure’s case is their exceptionally certified robotics group, led by CTO Jerry Pratt. Pratt spent 20 years on the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC), the place he led the group that took second place on the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals. Working with DRC Atlas, NASA’s Valkyrie, and most not too long ago Nadia, IHMC has established itself as a pacesetter in robotic design and management. And if anybody goes to take a helpful humanoid robotic from an engineering idea to industrial actuality, these are the oldsters to do it.

Figure was based in 2022 by Brett Adcock, who additionally based Archer Aviation, which has efficiently constructed and is presently flight testing a industrial passenger eVTOL plane. Figure was self-funded at the beginning, however is closing a Series A inside the subsequent couple of weeks. Over the previous yr, the corporate has employed greater than 40 engineers from establishments that embrace IHMC, Boston Dynamics, Tesla, Waymo, and Google X, most of whom have vital prior expertise with humanoid robots or different autonomous programs.

“It’s our view that this is the best humanoid robotics team out there,” Adcock tells IEEE Spectrum. “Collectively, the team has probably built 12 major humanoid robots,” provides CTO Jerry Pratt. “We’ll have expertise in just about every part of the thousands of things that you need to do for humanoids.” Pratt says that originally, Figure isn’t anticipating to make use of a lot in the way in which of latest expertise with their robotic—it’s not primarily based round some secret actuator expertise or something like that. “It’ll be a new design, with really solid engineering.”

The robotic that Figure is working in direction of is a “commercially viable general purpose humanoid,” which goes to look one thing like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b37rQZ4maPo

Obviously, the above video (and the entire robotic photographs on this article) are renderings, and don’t present an actual robotic doing actual issues. However, these renderings are primarily based on a CAD mannequin of the particular robotic that Figure plans to construct, so Figure expects that their closing {hardware} will likely be similar to what they’re displaying immediately. Which, if that’s the way it in the end seems, will likely be spectacular: it’s a really slim type issue, which does put some limits on its efficiency. The closing robotic will likely be totally electrical, 1.6 m tall, weigh 60 kg with a 20 kg payload, and run for five hours on a cost.

Figure

“Having a humanoid form—it’s really tough doing the packaging,” explains Pratt. “In general, with technology that’s available today, you can hit somewhere around 50%-60% on most human specs, like degrees of freedom, peak speeds and torques, things like that. It won’t be superhuman; we’ll be focusing on real-world applications and not trying to push the limits of pure performance.” This focus has helped Figure to constrain its design in pursuit of business utility: you want a robotic to be slim as a way to work in areas designed for people. With this design philosophy, you’re not going to get a robotic that can have the ability to do backflips, however you’ll get a robotic that may be productive in a cramped workspace or stroll safely by means of a crowded warehouse.

This relates again to the explanation why Figure is constructing a humanoid robotic within the first place. The added complexity of legs needs to be justified by some means, and Figure’s perspective is that constructing a robotic with out legs that has the mandatory vary of movement to do what it must do in a human workspace can be complicated sufficient that you simply may as effectively simply construct the robotic with legs anyway. And doing so opens up the chance (or maybe the crucial) to generalize. “If you’re making humanoids, you pretty much have to get to general purpose,” says Pratt. “For just one application, there’ll probably always be a dedicated robot that’ll be better.”

“With today’s technology, it’s impossible to get to as good as a human, so I think the strategy of getting as close to a human as you can is a perfectly valid one.” —Jerry Pratt

Figure, like most different firms engaged on industrial humanoids, sees warehouses as an apparent entry level. “The warehouse makes it easier on us,” says Adcock. “It’s indoors. There are no customers around. There are already AMRs [autonomous mobile robots] and cobots [collaborative robots] working around humans. And there’s a warehouse management software system to manage high-level behaviors. Our bet here is that if we can figure out how to get one application that’s big enough, and deploy enough robots, we can add new software as we go to do more things and over time manufacture really high volumes and get the robot to be affordable.” Adcock acknowledges that the robotic should make monetary sense out there that it’s focusing on. That is, if it’s going to take the place of human labor in a warehouse, it should be aggressive in price with human labor, which will likely be a critical problem that will (at the least initially) depend on some possibility for human teleoperation to maximise reliability.

Figure believes that it has a sensible shot at being the primary firm to truly commercialize a basic goal humanoid robotic, though each Adcock and Pratt identified that there’s a lot potential demand that they’re not particularly apprehensive about competitors. “I think it’s just a question of getting there,” Pratt tells us. “There’s room for several companies to just get there, and I think we can be one of them.”

I don’t suppose anyone’s going to dispute that basic goal humanoids will occur. I believe it’s only a matter of once they’ll occur, and what that can seem like. —Brett Adcock

Getting there, as Figure makes specific in its grasp plan, “will require significant advancements in technology.” Here is what the corporate believes it might want to make occur:

• System Hardware: Our group is designing a totally electromechanical humanoid, together with palms. The objective is to develop {hardware} with the bodily capabilities of a non-expert human. We are measuring this by way of vary of movement, payload, torque, price of transport and velocity, and can proceed to enhance by means of fast cycles of improvement, every cycle as a part of a continuum.
• Unit Cost: We’re aiming to scale back particular person humanoid unit prices by means of high-rate quantity manufacturing, working in direction of a sustainable economic system of scale. We are measuring our prices by means of the totally burdened working price/hour. At excessive charges of quantity manufacturing, I’m optimistic unit price will come right down to reasonably priced ranges.
• Safety: It’s important that our humanoids will have the ability to work together with people within the office safely. We will design them to have the ability to adhere to trade requirements and company necessities.
• Volume Manufacturing: We foresee not solely needing to ship a top quality product, but in addition needing to ship it at an exceptionally excessive quantity. We anticipate a steep studying curve as we exit prototyping and enter quantity manufacturing. We are getting ready for this by being considerate about design for manufacturing, system security, reliability, high quality, and different manufacturing planning.
• Artificial Intelligence: Building an AI system that allows our humanoids to carry out on a regular basis duties autonomously is arguably one of many hardest issues we face long-term. We are tackling this by constructing clever embodied brokers that may work together with complicated and unstructured real-world environments.

This all sounds very compelling, but it surely’s vital to notice that so far as we’re conscious, Figure has not executed any of it but. They have objectives and goals, they’re designing in direction of these objectives and goals, and so they can do their greatest foresee and anticipate a number of the challenges that lie forward and plan and put together to the extent that it’s attainable to take action. However, at this level it’s untimely for us (or anybody) to guage whether or not or not the corporate will likely be profitable, since they nonetheless have a variety of issues to determine. To be clear, I imagine that Figure believes that it will probably, finally, do what it says it plans to do. My criticism right here is generally that the corporate is doing extra telling than displaying—traditionally, this has not been a superb technique for robotics, which tends to be weak to the underdelivery of overpromises.

Figure does acknowledge that that is going to be a tough course of, and that the corporate faces “high risk and extremely low chances of success,” which is an attention grabbing assertion within the midst of what’s in any other case fairly a variety of uniformly optimistic hype, for lack of a greater phrase. And Adcock understands that the loftier objectives (just like the “consumer household” and “off-world” functions) will seemingly take some time, telling us that the corporate “gets really excited about the potential here over a multi-decade long period

A rendering of a humanoid robot shows a black faceplate that can also display information.Figure

So what is the actual state of Figure’s robot right now? “We just finished our alpha build,” Adcock says. “It’s our first full-scale robot. We’re building five of them. We hope it will start to take its first steps within the next 30 days. And now we’ve started on our second generation hardware and software version that we’ll have completed this summer.” It’s an aggressive timeline, and Figure hopes to be creating a brand new main model of each {hardware} and software program each 6 months, indefinitely. “We think we’re positioned well,” Adcock continues. “Hopefully we’ll make our big milestones this year, and be in a position to be first to market. We’re going to try. We’re going to move as fast as we possibly can to hit that goal.”