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Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

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Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#311

Post by 93po »

blackguardx wrote: post #244
93po wrote: 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.

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

because they already are. an industrial arm from ABB is frequently over $100k. add in the cost to fit it with specialty equipment like vacuum suction for handling boxes, made by a small to medium size business, they'd probably charge another $50k. and if it breaks you need specialty mechanics and parts.

in a world with 500 million humanoid robots, parts are plentiful, theyre easier to work on due to not weighing 5000 pounds, and like the other person said, economies of scale

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#312

Post by bjoli »

whatever1 wrote: post #239
aDyslecticCrow wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure that task needs a humanoid robot An industrial robot arm with air powered suction cups would do the trick... https://bostondynamics.com/products/stretch/ ... ... So the task they work best at is the task there is already cheaper better robots specialized for.

Of course it does not. We just add scanners in up down left and right of the conveyor. Never touching the package.

This was my solution as well. Why even have a robot? Give me a conveyor belt, some cameras and a moderately powerful SBC and I think I could probably manage a system that does one package a second with a fallback for humans to process what can't be processed by the machine.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#313

Post by filloooo »

Flere-Imsaho wrote: post #178
natemcintosh wrote: post #23

I would love to have something like this for all the chores around my house. But I also have serious reservations about the increased level insight into my private home life this could provide to the manufacturer. Look at cases like the ring camera security violations [1]. A moving robot could be an order of magnitude more invasive of your privacy. If I were to purchase this, I would want serious privacy guarantees.…

"Figure 03 also includes 10 Gbps mmWave data offload capability, allowing the entire fleet to upload terabytes of data for continuous learning and improvement." Yeah I'll pass thanks.

I love how they make simple things complicated, it's just 5G man, much like how they made a cinematic video about how they solder and put together battery packs like some technology breakthrough.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#314

Post by Tepix »

1121redblackgo wrote: post #29

It's going to be wild when these things cost 30 grand, and we all start having them in our houses. Along with fusion, I think robots in the home will be the defining technology of our generation. It's been talked about and fictionalized forever, and within my lifetime I expect the economics on it to finally break through. Equal parts terror, awe, fear, when it comes to having a robot in my home.

They need to solve the privacy issue. Ideally these robots can only communicate with a server in your own basement.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#315

Post by sneak »

aerostable_slug wrote: post #277
xky wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To add to that, a good friend of mine is a welder and machinist (and still using Linux on the desktop years after I set him up). A robot 'helper' that just moves things around and maybe does basic machine work (cutting pipe and threading the ends, for example) would put his productivity through the roof. Same story with a guy who specializes in kitchen remodeling. It's hard to find decent general purpose help these d…

Once it’s able to weld and climb then building skyscrapers will become a lot easier and cheaper as you don’t need safety equipment for them.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#317

Post by sneak »

brailsafe wrote: post #254
robots0only wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+100!!! Please don't fall for the HYPE. The current best neural networks only have around 60% success rates for small horizon tasks (think 10-20 seconds e.g. pick up apple). That is why there is so much cut-motions in this video. The future will be awesome but it will take time a lot of research still needs to happen (e.g. robust hands, tactile, how to even collect large scale data, RL).

> The future will be awesome Perhaps this is a bit pedantic, but what about the probable eventual proliferation of useful humanoid robots will make the future awesome? What does an awesome future look like compared to today, to you?

Personal trainer. Driver. Valet. Private chef. Security guard. Doorman. Delivery driver. Rough carpentry. Baggage handler. Laundry handler. Janitor. Garbage collector. Pallet loader/unloader.

All with much improved privacy, reliability, order of magnitude lower cost, no risk of robbery/SA, etc. 24/7 operation even on holidays. Imagine service staff just sitting waiting for you to need them, always and everywhere.

Nevermind how much human lifespan will be freed from the tyranny of these mindless jobs.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#318

Post by serf »

timschmidt wrote: post #289
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

the unitree r1 is effectively a useless toy. it's like positing about the future of robotics by looking at a sumo bot.

what it IS , however, is a remarkable achievement of commoditization; getting a toy like that with those kind of motors would have been prohibitively expensive anywhere else in the world; but much like the Chinese 20k EV, it's not really a reliable marker for the actual future; in fact bottomed out pricing is more-so an indicator of the phase of industrialization that country is in.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#319

Post by timschmidt »

serf wrote: post #318
timschmidt wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

the unitree r1 is effectively a useless toy. it's like positing about the future of robotics by looking at a sumo bot. what it IS , however, is a remarkable achievement of commoditization; getting a toy like that with those kind of motors would have been prohibitively expensive anywhere else in the world; but much like the Chinese 20k EV, it's not really a reliable marker for the actual future; in fact bottomed out p…

> the unitree r1 is effectively a useless toy

Only because it's not yet attached to a reasonable AI, which is my point. It's not going to do any heavy lifting, but it could easily do basic house chores like cleaning up, folding laundry, etc if it were. The actuators and body platform are there, and economies of scale already at work.

I guess some folks just can't or won't put 2 and 2 together to predict the near future.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#320

Post by iancmceachern »

aeternum wrote: post #297
Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like we're entering the era of general and inefficient solutions to problems. Like LLMs being used to pick values out of JSON objects when jq would do the job 1000x more efficiently. This is what this whole field feels like right now. Let's spend lots of time and energy to create a humanoid robot to do the things humans already decided humans were inefficient at and solved with specialised tools. Like people s…

There were plenty of digital circuit engineers back in the 90s that said microprocessors were general and inefficient solutions to problems. And if you needed it programmable, well an FPGA was still almost as general and far more efficient than a microprocessor. Guess what won.

As a hardware engineer I hear this a lot from software/electrical folks.

It's Moore's law that largely drove what you describe.

Moore's law only applies to semiconductors.

Gears, motors and copper wire are not going to get 10x faster/cheaper every 18 months or whatever.

10 years from now gears will cost more, they will cost what they cost now plus inflation.

I've literally heard super smart YC founders say they just assume some sort of "Moore's law for hardware" will magicallyake their idea workable next year.

Computing power gets, and will continue to get, cheaper every day. Hardware, gears, nuts, bolts, doesnt.

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