Figure AI has made one of the most aggressive claims recently regarding the capabilities of humanoid robots driven by the Helix-02 AI system. According to the company’s statement, robots based on the Helix-02 AI system can independently operate for an entire eight-hour shift without any assistance from humans.
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The main difference between Helix-02 and robotic systems introduced in the past is architecture. Most traditional industrial robots have two separated controllers: one for motion and another for manipulation. However, the Helix-02 system integrates both controllers into one neural network and allows processing all the inputs simultaneously, including vision data from cameras located on the head and palms, tactile sensors on fingertips, and joint position data throughout the body.
The advantages of Helix-02 were demonstrated in several demonstrations of autonomous humanoid robot operation. For example, one robot driven by the Helix-02 AI system autonomously unloaded and then loaded a dishwasher during four consecutive minutes without interruption and resetting. Another demonstration included two robots working autonomously and simultaneously within two minutes on rearranging a bedroom: hanging clothes, making a bed, emptying the waste bin, and arranging the furniture.
Not only that but Figure AI also released System 0, an end-to-end whole body neural controller with over 1,000 hours of human motion data training. This reduces more than 109,000 lines of handwritten C++ code. This should not be taken lightly since handcrafted codes tend to be fragile, whereas a learned system generalises and can handle the chaos of real-life environments that scripted logic cannot do.
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Fine motor skills are also remarkable. Helix-02 robots are capable of unscrewing bottle caps, extracting pills from a pill organiser, pushing accurate amounts of syringes, and manipulating metallic parts from a bin based on tactile and in-hand vision.
Furthermore, the robot works on top of Figure AI’s previous implementation, which had been working in BMW’s plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina, handling over 10 hours per day, moving over 90,000 parts per day and producing over 30,000 cars.
The race for humanoid robots in factories is very much on the table now with other companies such as Tesla, Agility Robots, and Apptronik, amongst others, competing aggressively.
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