Figure's BMW General Purpose Robot Pilot

California robotics firm Figure AI are described as being “general purpose”

Hey Everyone,

I wanted to briefly cover Figure’s PR around their partnership with BMW, since I feel it produces some mainstream brand recognition. Because if it trends on Reddit, it must be impressive? Right?

Free up Humans?

Brett Adcock is the CEO of Figure. Warning some of the podcasts he has done have been very cringe.

Still what would BMW actually want to use a Figure robot for? BMW's newest autoworker is 5'6," 130 pounds, walks on two legs, uses five-fingered hands to assemble machines — and takes a break every five hours to stroll to a charging station and plug itself in. Every five hours, come on Brett!

The robots, which are designed to be more operationally flexible than traditional industrial robots, will supposedly assist the luxury car manufacturer with various parts of the manufacturing process.

Still this commercial agreement is good for publicity. If it’s good for general purpose humanoid robots, it’s good for all robots.

Figure’s value-prop is also a mouthful:

Figure's humanoid robots enable the automation of difficult, unsafe, or tedious tasks throughout the manufacturing process, which in turn allows employees to focus on skills and processes that cannot be automated, as well as continuous improvement in production efficiency and safety.