Live data from Hacker News

Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

figure.ai

281–290 of 417 posts

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#281

I don't understand why this even has to charge at all. It makes sense for multiple reasons to give it 3 batteries that say have 1/3 of the capacity, and make at least 1, if not 2 or 3 capable of charging independently on a station. Then the robot would just go to its station and swap its own batteries. Why even have wireless charging at all? Or even a cable? Or even have it "charge"? Battery swapping seems to make wa…

What happens if it can't get to the charger in time to do the swap? Same problem roombas have where you have to fish them out from under your couch, except now the damn thing is 5 feet tall and weighs 300 pounds.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#282

Folks are very critical. Consider: this is the worst they will ever be. You improve one robot at one task, they all can share that training. It will only get better from here.

I don't doubt their progress, I just don't want them to be progressing. I feel like technology has gotten dystopian very quickly and I've lost my optimism for it being a force for good.

This is probably similar to what is driving negativity from other commenters too, although probably some are just concerned about an investment bubble.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#283
That slow motion, looking-over-the-shoulder shot is way too reminiscent of action movie trailers and maybe you don’t want to associate your product with people dying spectacularly, loudly, and even on fire.

Unless you’re trying to warn us to shut you down while there is still time. Blink if you need help.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#284
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s too bad there isn’t some kind of liquid battery which you could just quickly top off at refueling stations with virtually zero downtime. Yes, like gasoline. But still batteries. Maybe some kind of bearing sized batteries which can be poured like a fluid?

You are describing a fuel cell battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell Well established and even commercialized (Toyota sells fuel cell cars today IIRC), just not as cost effective in cars from a full infrastructure perspective (fueling specifically).

I wasn’t describing that, I was describing individual batteries which are small enough to be effectively liquid in aggregate.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#285

How does Figure 03 know if the washer is actually on? I know it has tactile sensors on its fingers but if it tried to press the button and missed how would it know? I know it's probably not by sound.

I’m sure the sensor signals look different when you press a button vs when you hit a wall. Enough that it could certainly be learned by a model

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

have you ever googled a simple maths question? I often come back to that and realise we've been in this era for quite a while. Calculator would probably be 1000x more efficient!

Sure, but I have to launch the calculator, instead of just typing it into the ever present search bar of my persistent open browser. If I could just type it into my shell, that would be nice. I’m sure there’s some command (or one could be trivially made) to evaluate an equation, but then you get to play game with shell expansions and quotes. In emacs I have to convolute the equation into prefix. All minor stuff but i…

> I’m sure there’s some command (or one could be trivially made)

bc

https://www.gnu.org/software/bc/manual/html_mono/bc.html

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#288
post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think a humanoid robot will be cheaper than a robot arm?

If humanoid robots can perform ok on a broader set of tasks then they could reach economies of scale that a robot arm might not.

There are couple UR5 single arm cobots on eBay at $5.5k each right at this moment. The truth is that the value of humanoid is in it form, the novelty, the sense of accomplishment, not features.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#289
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the use case here is smaller to medium size businesses that don't need a $150k suction robot arm 24/7, but do need 24/7 help with warehousing, packaging, restocking, taking inventory, sorting mailing, applying shipping labes, etc. With a single humanoid robot you can do all that for, at some point, possibly as low as $20k for a one-time robot purchase.

> one-time robot purchase. With a hefty subscription to make it do anything useful.

I can already run the Qwen3 VL multimodal model for text, image processing, and speech recognition and generation on a well spec'd home workstation.

And the Unitree R1 already only costs $6k.

All the necessary pieces are aligning, very rapidly, and as James Burke has pointed out, that's when Connections happen.

Post reply on HN