October 17, 2023
Have you ever wished you had a robot assistant that could do all the boring and tedious tasks for you? Well, you might be in luck, because a new company called Figure is developing a humanoid robot that can walk, pick things up, move them around, and navigate the world, all by itself.
Figure is a startup founded by Brett Adcock, a technology entrepreneur who also created Archer, an electric vertical take off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft company. He has assembled a team of experts from companies like Boston Dynamics, Tesla, Google Deepmind, and Apple, who have been working on the Figure 01 robot for just over a year.
The Figure 01 robot is designed to be a general-purpose worker that can perform various tasks in different environments. It has a screen for a face, two arms, two legs, and a battery pack on its back. It can lift up to 20 kg (44 lb) of weight, walk at speeds up to 4.3 km/h (2.7 mph), and operate for up to five hours on a charge. It can also climb stairs, avoid obstacles, and respond to physical inputs from humans.
The Figure team has recently released a video of the robot walking dynamically, which means it can adjust its balance and react to changes in the terrain. The video shows the robot moving smoothly and quickly, compared to other humanoid robots that tend to walk slowly and stiffly. The team claims that they achieved this feat in less than 12 months, which is a record for a new humanoid initiative.
The Figure team's goal is to show the robot doing useful work by the end of the year. They plan to start with easy jobs involving moving things around in a warehouse-type environment, and then expand its abilities to take over more and more tasks. They believe that this is the right decade to make humanoid robots work, thanks to the advances in batteries, motors, AI, and locomotion control.
If you are curious about Figure and its robot, you can check out their website or watch their video mentioned in the source article. Who knows, maybe one day you will have your own robot helper at home or at work!
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