Humanoid robot offers a peek into a future without chores

Figure is gradually prepping its humanoid robot to competently take on household chores. While the California-based company has ambitions to deploy its robot in industrial settings like factories and warehouses, it also plans to create a robot capable of functioning inside a home.

A new video (top) released by Figure on Monday shows its humanoid robot tidying up a messy — though not too messy — living room, putting away some toys, rearranging cushions, placing the remote control neatly on the coffee table, and performing some light polishing.

While not lightning fast, the autonomous bipedal bot moves at a steady pace and with natural movement, and you could well imagine it working away quietly while the home’s occupants are out or even asleep.

The robot is powered by the latest version of Figure’s proprietary vision-language-action AI, called Helix 02. It’s powerful enough that if the robot is presented with a task that it hasn’t yet been trained for, it’ll be able to learn it.

“If you could give a home robot one job, ‘tidy the living room’ would be near the top of the list,” Figure says in a post about the video. “But from a robotics perspective, this task is incredibly difficult. Unlike more structured commercial tasks, a living room changes constantly. Objects are scattered unpredictably. Furniture creates narrow navigation paths. Soft items like towels and pillows behave dynamically. Many actions require both hands, while others require freeing a hand in the middle of a task. And nearly every behavior involves moving through the room while manipulating something at the same time.”

While the video shows off some of the robot’s impressive skills, meaningful deployment of humanoid robots in the home still faces major challenges. For example, homes are highly variable and cluttered environments, so robots must be carefully trained to reliably recognize objects, navigate tight spaces, and manipulate many different items without error.

Safety and reliability are also critical, as the robot would be operating close to people (including small children), pets, and fragile objects. Cost is another consideration, with current humanoid robots expensive to build and maintain.

Figure is one of many companies vying to edge ahead in the sector, with stiff competition from Chinese companies like Unitree causing the global race for humanoid robot leadership to intensify. This year is certainly shaping up to be an exciting one in the fast-developing field of humanoid robots.