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Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

figure.ai

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Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#401

Post by more_corn »

HAL3000 wrote: post #78

All of the examples in videos are cherry picked. Go ask anyone working on humanoid robots today, almost everything you see here, if repeated 10 times, will enter failure mode because the happy path is so narrow. There should really be benchmarks where you invite robots from different companies, ask them beforehand about their capabilities, and then create an environment that is within those capabilities but was not u…

I wonder if instead of making a robot to interact with the washing machine we should try to make a washing machine with an input and output hopper. Dump clothing in get clean folded clothing out.

You can control the happy path when the whole thing is your box.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#402

Post by godelski »

pizzathyme wrote: post #132
HAL3000 wrote: post #78

All of the examples in videos are cherry picked. Go ask anyone working on humanoid robots today, almost everything you see here, if repeated 10 times, will enter failure mode because the happy path is so narrow. There should really be benchmarks where you invite robots from different companies, ask them beforehand about their capabilities, and then create an environment that is within those capabilities but was not u…

How does this square with the video where they showed it running continuously for an hour doing an actual Amazon package sorting job? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkc2y0yb89U

I'm really confused by this video. What is it even supposed to be doing?

Is it supposed to be taking packages and placing them label face down?

I cannot understand how a robot doing this is cheaper than a second scanner so you can read the label face down or face up. I mean you could do that with a mirror.

But I'm not convinced it is even doing that. Several packages are already "label side down" and it just moves them along. Do those packages even have labels? Clearly the behavior learned is "label not on top", not "label side down". No way is that the intended behavior.

If the bar code is the issue, then why not switch to a QR code or some other format? There's not much information you need in shipping so the QR code can have lots of redundancy, making it readable from many different angles and even if significantly damaged.

The video description also says "approaching human-level dexterity and speed". No way. I'd wager I could do this task at least 10x its speed, if not 20x. And that I'd do it better! I mean I watched a few minutes at 2x speed and man is it slow. Sure, this thing might be able to run 24/7 without breaks, but if I'm running 10-20x faster then what's that matter? I could just come in a few hours a day and blow through its quota. I'd really like to see an actual human worker for comparison.

But if we did want something to do this very narrow task for 24/7, I'm pretty sure there are a hundred different cheaper ways to do it. If there aren't, then it is because there is some edge cases that are pretty important. And without knowing that then we can't actually properly evaluate this video. Besides, this video seems like a pretty simple ideal case. I'm not sure what an actual amazon sorting process looks like, but I suspect not like this.

Regardless, the results look pretty cool and I'm pretty impressed with Figure even if it is an over-simplified case.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#403

Post by godelski »

tyre wrote: post #144
dust42 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How does this square with the video where they showed it running continuously for an hour doing an actual Amazon package sorting job? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkc2y0yb89U The video shows several of glitches. From the comments: 14:18 the Fall 28:40 the Fall 2 41:23 the Fall 3 Also many of the packages on the left are there throughout the video. But then I think lots of this can be solved in software and havin…

Three mistakes in an hour isn’t terrible, especially if that’s the last generation. As another commenter put it, this is the worst it’s ever going to be.

I only watched for 5 minutes, at double speed, but I saw a lot more than 3 mistakes fwiw

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#404

Post by spopejoy »

Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #232
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.

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…

> LLMs being used to pick values out of JSON objects

Or the often-trumpeted "I had Claude do a killer refactor" that an IDE can do locally for zero power faster and 100% reliably

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#405

Post by spopejoy »

anentropic wrote: post #345
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…

From the demo videos on the site... it seems now that people have dishwashers they want a robot to load the dishwasher for them

That's not that weird, even if it is pretty pathetic. I don't understand it now but I used to dread "doing the dishes" when I was younger even though it was 95% just filling a dishwasher. Laziness drives technology an awful lot, at least from a product POV.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#406

Post by spopejoy »

93po wrote: post #236
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.

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.

We're so far from that though. Even if we magically jump over the failure rates we're discussing here, the safety considerations seem to be far worse. These things are heavy and dangerous, c.f. Rodney Brooks' "never follow a robot up stairs" https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/10/why-irobots-founder-wont-...

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#407

Post by [deleted] »

aeternum wrote: post #393
iancmceachern wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the two (software and hardware) scale very differently. Once software is "done" (we all know software is never done) you can just copy it and distribute it. It is negligiblehow much it costs to do so. Once hardware is done you have to manufacture each and every piece of hardware with the same care, detail and reliability as the first one. You can't just click copy. Often times you have to completely redesign…

China has shown that they don't scale all that differently. Yes the tooling is hard to build but after that you hit go and the factory makes the copies for you. It's not quite startrek replicator but much closer to that than the US view of manufacturing where you have your union guy sitting in front of the machine to pull the lever.

[deleted]

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#408

Post by aDyslecticCrow »

rowanG077 wrote: post #322
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…

Isn't the entire point that LLMs are unreasonably better at even specific things that you would naively think a purpose build system would be good at.

Could you name an example aside rephrasing text?

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#409

Post by elendee »

CooCooCaCha wrote: post #19
Workaccount2 wrote: post #3

What does your life around your house look like when you can shamelessly leave a mess everywhere? It almost makes the uncomfortable with the amount of laziness it enables. At least with a human maid you still feel shame leaving a mess, but a robot?

Why are you fixated on laziness and shame when it comes to tedious household tasks? Why is it so important to you that people fold their own clothes and wash their own dishes? Why do you idolize a life of increased drudgery?

because it affects other people; it's not just shame for shame's sake, it's learning what effect we have on the people around us and how to navigate that. Guy who has lived with a lot of people here.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#410

Post by aeternum »

iancmceachern wrote: post #399
aeternum wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has shown that they don't scale all that differently. Yes the tooling is hard to build but after that you hit go and the factory makes the copies for you. It's not quite startrek replicator but much closer to that than the US view of manufacturing where you have your union guy sitting in front of the machine to pull the lever.

This isn't true. They've showed that slave (or nearly) labor is cheap or even free.

This was somewhat true at once point but is a highly outdated view. Labor is no longer cheap in China relative to other nearby countries and there's a huge amount of automation with some factories that don't even turn on lights because they are effectively 100% automated.
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