Robotics startup Figure is planning the world’s first commercially viable general-purpose humanoid robot, Figure 01. As of the moment, the Figure 01 robot does not yet exist, but the planned device has the ability to think, learn and to interact with its environment and is intended for initial deployment as a workforce to address labor shortages. In the future the robot can lead the way in eliminating the need for unsafe and unwanted jobs.
Behind the company is an exceptionally skilled robotics team led by Chief Technology Officer Jerry Pratt. Pratt spent 20 years at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC), where he led a team that achieved Second place in the finals of the DARPA Robotics Challenge.
Startup Figure was founded in 2022 by Brett Adcock, who also founded Archer Aviation, which has successfully built and is currently testing an eVTOL commercial airliner. Over the past year, the company has hired more than 40 engineers from well-known artificial intelligence and robotics companies such as IHMC, Boston Dynamics, Tesla, Waymo and Google X. Most of these have significant prior experience with humanoid robots or other autonomous systems.
Figure hopes to have its robot ready within a year, in order to be the first to market and beat others who working on a similar projects, for example company Tesla.
Source: Spectrum