After a period of anticipation, the collaboration between the artificial intelligence robotics company Figure and the German automotive giant BMW has made significant progress. The performance of the Figure02 humanoid robot on the production line has improved dramatically, with its speed increased by 400% and its success rate enhanced sevenfold.
Figure has released a new video showcasing the powerful capabilities of Figure02. Bred Adcock, the founder and CEO of Figure, stated that the robot can perform up to 1,000 operations per day. He mentioned, “As we deploy more robots, gather more data, and improve our AI models, this number will continue to rise.”
In the video, the robot demonstrates its abilities in a high-precision task that involves inserting a difficult-to-handle metal piece into a slot less than 1 centimeter wide. Adcock pointed out that this task is highly challenging and requires the robot to exhibit extreme reliability during execution.
During this process, the robot must grasp these tricky metal components and place them accurately in the designated location while avoiding collisions with metal fixtures. To meet the task requirements, the cycle time for the operation needs to be reduced by four minutes. “The difficulty of this task is ten times that of any static surface manipulation task we have demonstrated before,” Adcock stated.
The collaboration began earlier this year, and the humanoid robot was successfully tested at BMW's factory in Spatenburg. This marks the first time BMW has used humanoid robots on its production line. Although BMW previously stated that “the Spatenburg factory does not have Figure AI robots and the timeline for introducing robots to the factory has not been determined,” reports indicate that the Figure humanoid robot will return to the BMW factory in January 2025.
Recently, Figure AI completed a Series B funding round of $675 million, with investors including OpenAI, NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Jeff Bezos. The California-based humanoid robot manufacturer is currently valued at $2.6 billion. Adcock also mentioned that the current speed of the robots is still far from the maximum speed of the motors, and Figure expects to deploy more humanoid robots in real-world environments before 2025.
Key Highlights:
🌟 The Figure02 humanoid robot's speed on the BMW production line has increased by 400%, with a success rate increased sevenfold.
🤖 The robot can perform up to 1,000 operations daily, with future increases expected.
💰 Figure AI recently completed $675 million in funding, with a valuation of $2.6 billion.