The F.02 humanoid is already at work at a Figure AI customer site. Source: Brett Adcock via LinkedIn
Humanoid robots are starting to move from development and trials to commercial use. Figure AI Inc. this month announced that it has delivered its Figure 02 systems to a customer.
“Exciting news — today, Figure officially became a revenue-generating company!” Brett Adcock, founder and CEO of Figure AI, posted to LinkedIn. “This week, we delivered F.02 humanoid robots to our commercial client, & they’re currently hard at work.”
Figure 02 continues fast pace
Figure AI won a 2024 RBR50 award for its rapid pace of innovation. Since emerging from stealth in January 2023, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company has built and iterated on a working humanoid and tested its robot on a production line.
“It marks 31 months from filing our C-Corp to getting to humanoid robot revenue,” wrote Adcock, who was a guest on The Robot Report Podcast.
In May 2023, Figure AI raised $70 million in Series A funding, and that July, Intel Capital invested in the company. In February 2024, Figure closed its Series B round of $675 million.
The Figure 01 humanoid took its first public steps in October 2023, and the fully redesigned, sleeker Figure 02 debuted in August 2024. In addition, Figure AI has partnered with OpenAI, which recently restarted its own robotics research group, on speech-to-speech communications with humans.
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Humanoids take steps toward commercial use
Over the past two years, the number of companies working on humanoids has grown, as has the supporting ecosystem of software and artificial intelligence for locomotion, navigation, and dexterous manipulation. However, only a few have moved into pilots and commercialization.
In August 2024, Figure AI said that BMW Group had tested Figure 02 for handling fitted sheet-metal parts on its automotive production line for two weeks in Spartanburg, S.C. BMW had previously tested Figure 01.
Adcock did not name Figure AI’s commercial client. The Robot Report will add information as it becomes available.
Other companies besides Figure that have had commercial trials of humanoid robots include Agility Robotics, Apptronik, Boston Dynamics, and Tesla. Their systems are being tested in manufacturing and warehouse settings by Amazon, GXO Logistics, Mercedes-Benz, and Schaeffler.
The global market for humanoid robots could experience a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 96% between 2022 and 2030, reaching $6.8 billion, according to ABI Research. It noted that the number of units shipped could grow from 1,000 in 2025 to 182,000 by 2030.
However, use cases, safety standards, and pricing models are still being defined. Gartner Inc. has put humanoids at the beginning of its latest “hype cycle” for mobile robots and drones.
A primary issue is sensoriness throughout the robot at all points on the robot and deep and redundant sensors at that. I see no public review or demos or stories about the sensory input cameras are not sufficient, just as they are not sufficient for humans to move about in their environment. People rely on knowing inherently where every part of their body is, every part of your body has micro sensors at the millions of counts and has them deeply for pressure pain, temperature, contact, movement of air, sound, vibration, etc. while cameras might be okay there for outdoor objects like cars once something is in your house in the proximity of people moving about just like every other animal, it needs sensors and lots of them everywhere. Sensory nets sensory nets
Now consider your vacuum robot, able to navigate your home with just cameras and sometimes lidar or a bump sensor..
Just a few sensors can go a long way, depends on the application. A humanoid will need gyro sensors in any case, and an electric motor can “sense touch” by calculating the difference between force applied and distance covered.
I will take two of those
Will robot need day off for pet illness or mental fatigue or the flu or just because boss is mean for not allowing you to be on phone
Waiting to buy a robot(slave) when they become available, to do all household
chores etc
, so I can do absolutely nothing.
When you has nothing to do, you are gonna ask your robot to do more than household chores
Since every robot see to date is just doing either instruction based work og are remotely operated they are very limited. Sure now they plug in AI chat so they talk with you just as an AI interaction, but they are far from discovering and solving problems.
Hence it is either a radio controlled machine (the ones that look most impressive from Boston dynamics) og doing repetitive tasks like moving lawn, vacuum in patterns og an arm using tools. Now they put in AI but what is AI is it smart? Not really, all it does is answer on your input. Sure it’s impressive answers but they are not self aware, they are mostly just programmed to be helpful assistant.
But it is possible big moves will happen in robotics and AI, but right now it is very over hyped.
I develop AI and I see a lot of over hyped sentiment around this now. Many believe they think by themselves and even have emotions and feelings they do not.