Sorry, Figure AI, but your robot is only cool if it can walk like a human
Figure 02 is currently half a winding robot, and you only have to look as far as the new announcement video to understand why.
The video starts off promisingly enough. Figure AI’s Figure 02 robot, a redesign of the original Figure 01, looks more human than ever. It has a smooth head and a fabric-covered neck, its arms have lost most of their steampunk look, and its hands are complete with 10 expressive fingers and fluid movements. Even fully formed, Figure 02’s narrow torso and slightly thick legs could pass for a human from a distance.
Because the robot appears to be following its name as it prints, the effect is enhanced; the movements are fluid, precise and eerie.
Even the feet have a pleasingly humanoid shape, and the twist at the hip with the arms pulling back just a little bit is a nice bit of physiological animation. The next bit is perhaps the best bit, when Figure 02 raises his almost perfectly formed hand (with 16 degrees of freedom) and looks at it as he twists it back and forth and bends his fingers. Wow.
Sure, the face lacks any recognizable features and is instead a screen with the Figure AI logo that spins around to indicate, I guess, that it’s analyzing its environment. There’s also a single large camera where the eyes might be (Figure AI says there are six cameras on the robot that power its “AI Vision”).
Everything here says, “Look to the future.”
Yes, until Figure 02 starts walking across a factory floor. The steps stop while his legs seem to be at a permanent 15-degree angle. The soles of his feet are fixed in a parallel position to the floor; they never bend or tilt as your feet would. His beautiful hands and arms swing stiffly (and barely) as he trundles along. Another Figure 02 robot behind him fares no better. The walk is so halting that he looks lost. This is how humans would walk if we always held a grapefruit between our legs.
It’s also walking at a speed that would irritate any New York City commuter trying to catch their next train. I want to shout at the screen, “Pick up the pace!”
Maybe walking doesn’t matter so much. Figure AI is currently testing the AI-powered robot on an assembly line at BMW’s factory in Spartanburg, South Carolina. In the video, the robot appears to be working autonomously on a number of chassis components, using its neural network to figure out the right way to assemble the parts.
Figure AI explains in the video that the robot corrects itself as it learns. To be fair, it seems to do a pretty good job. You’d hope that when you buy a BMW, you’d find a little tag somewhere that says, “Partially assembled by a humanoid robot from Figure 02… pretty cool, huh?”
The video does this well enough, but again, the pacing seems incredibly slow. There’s a wide shot in the background that shows a giant custom-built robot, mostly consisting of one arm, working rapidly. If the Figure 02 robot had feelings, it might be embarrassed.
Figure AI has made a lot of progress in just six months, and the company has warned that it could take decades to execute its master plan. Still, this video isn’t the best showcase for its robots. If they can’t walk as smoothly as humans or even a Boston Dynamics Atlas or Honda ASIMO from 2007 (RIP), so why even run it? Even with the excellent hands and potentially impressive AI capabilities (partly powered by an OpenAI partnership), all I could focus on was the poor running skills.
Well, maybe Figure 03 will come along early next year and literally run circles around Figure 02.