Challenging Musk, the most powerful humanoid robot on earth has evolved to the second generation: it has grown taller and heavier, and has entered the BMW factory to work
2024-08-07
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Figure AI releases its second-generation humanoid robot Figure 02. Li Yaorui, editor of The Paper (01:55)
Figure AI released the "most powerful AI hardware on the planet" and officially "declared war" with Musk.
On August 6th local time, Figure AI, an artificial intelligence robotics startup invested by OpenAI, Microsoft, Nvidia, Intel and Amazon founder Bezos, released its second-generation humanoid robot Figure 02.
Officials call it "the world's most advanced AI hardware," powered by AI, self-sufficient, and capable of producing large quantities of cheap, more widely available goods and services never before seen by humanity.
Figure AI founder Brett Adcock said the company’s engineering and design teams completely redesigned the hardware and software for Figure 02, improving key technologies such as AI, computer vision, batteries, electronics, sensors and actuators.
Figure 02
Specifically, Figure 02 is a completely exoskeleton structure, with power and computing power wiring integrated inside; equipped with a fourth-generation dexterous hand with 16 degrees of freedom and human-like strength; equipped with an onboard VLM (visual language model), equipped with 6 cameras, supporting the robot camera for fast common-sense visual reasoning; supporting voice-to-voice reasoning, and using OpenAI's custom AI model to communicate with humans. Compared with the previous generation, Figure 02's onboard computing and AI reasoning capabilities have increased by 3 times.
Adcock said that the latest artificial intelligence model will run on Figure 02. At the same time, its default usage is voice, for example, users can directly name their robots through voice dialogue.
The battery life of Figure 02 has also been improved, with the custom battery pack in the robot increased by 50% to 2.25 KWh. Adcock said this move was to maximize the robot's operating time, hoping that Figure 02's actual effective working time per day could exceed 20 hours. However, the official website parameters still show that Figure 02's battery life is only 5 hours, the same as the previous generation.
In addition, compared to the first generation, Figure 02 has increased from 1.6 meters to about 1.7 meters (5.6 feet) in height, and its weight has increased from 60 kilograms to 70 kilograms. Adcock said that the increase in net weight is due to the addition of multiple cameras and hardware components such as anti-drop.
The official video also shows a clip of Figure 02 "working" in a BMW car factory. Figure AI reached a commercial agreement with BMW in January this year, sent Figure 01 to the factory, and began to explore the introduction of general-purpose robots into automobile production.
Figure AI was founded in 2022 and officially released its first general-purpose humanoid robot, Figure 01, in March 2023. It aims to solve the global labor shortage problem by performing various tasks in industries such as manufacturing, logistics, warehousing and retail.
Adcock revealed on August 6 that Figure 02 had been in preparation 18 months ago, and told everyone to look forward to the next 18 months. This also means that Figure AI's products may be iterated every 18 months from now on.
It is worth mentioning that after the release of Figure 02, Adcock responded to a tweet from Musk half a year ago, with a picture of "Look at me, I'm the captain now (lyrics of "Captain Phillips")."
Adcock responds to Musk
At that time, Musk replied to Figure AI’s tweet announcing the completion of $675 million in financing: “Come on, come on.”
Investors in this round of financing include Bezos Expeditions, Nvidia, Microsoft, Intel Capital and OpenAI, and the company's valuation has reached $2.3 billion. Figure AI and OpenAI will work together to "develop the next generation of AI models for humanoid robots" and will also use Microsoft's Azure cloud service to complete AI infrastructure, training and storage.
Not only that, some sharp-eyed netizens discovered that in the official video of Figure 02, many scenes and even the lighting are similar to the video of the Optimus Prime humanoid robot previously released by Tesla.
At the end of last year, Tesla released the second-generation Optimus, equipped with actuators and sensors designed by Tesla, a 2-DOF drive neck, an 11-DOF hand, a tactile sensor, actuator integrated electronics and wiring harnesses, foot force/torque sensors, articulated toes, etc. In May this year, according to the latest video released, Optimus Prime has used end-to-end neural networks to perform 4680 battery sorting and other tasks in the factory.
Musk said some Optimus Primes will most likely be delivered sometime next year.
Adcock also said that Figure AI will promote low-cost and efficient manufacturing and will start mass production next year. He said that Figure AI measures its capabilities by "the percentage of tasks that can be completed autonomously that humans can currently complete," and said that this capability will only continue to improve over time.
The Paper reporter Qin Sheng
(This article is from The Paper. For more original information, please download the "The Paper" APP)
