OpenAI-backed Figure, the start-up robotics tech company who are developing AI-powered robots for household and factory work, has revealed its next generation of humanoid robot, called Figure 02.
At 1,67m tall and weighing 60 kg, the Figure 02 marks a significant improvement on their Figure 01 model, and features an exoskeleton-based structure that enables it to carry and manoeuvre heavier objects with ease.
Figure 02 also has enhanced visual reasoning capabilities that enable the robot to learn a task and even self-correct mistakes. This development marks a significant leap forward in AI-powered humanoid robotics.
New features in Figure 02
The new version, standing features a sleek exoskeleton-based design – with the outer layer constructed to be load bearing, and humanoid hands equipped with 16 degrees of movement range.
The hands, are a major upgrade providing greater human-equivalent strength and dexterity. They have been designed specifically to enable the robot to handle human-like tasks and lift objects up to 20kg in weight.
Brett Adcock, the CEO of the company says, the next-gen humanoid visualizes, understands and executes tasks like these through an AI-driven vision system, which uses six onboard RGB cameras located in its head, front torso and back torso.
The data from the cameras is sent to an onboard visual language Ai powered model which works as the brain of the machine, helping with semantic grounding and fast common-sense visual reasoning.
Like the first version, Figure 02’s enhanced visual reasoning works with speech-to-speech conversations, powered by custom AI models trained in partnership with OpenAI. This provides a voice operated instruction capability and it will combine both speech and visual reasoning (using both the command and camera data) to reply and take the required action. It can even self-correct itself with these capabilities combined.
Figure 02 has an onboard vision Language Model or VLM, that enables fast common-sense visual reasoning from robot cameras. The new model also contains a 2.25 KWh battery pack that reportedly delivers 50% more power than Figure 01 and can operate for up to 20 hours a day without recharging. Figure 02 claims to have three times the computation & AI inference of Figure 01 and can apparently perform real-world tasks fully autonomously and much faster than Figure 01.
