{"id":159552,"date":"2023-03-04T17:31:01","date_gmt":"2023-03-04T23:31:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/03\/figure-emerges-from-stealth-with-the-first-images-of-its-humanoid-robot"},"modified":"2023-03-04T17:31:01","modified_gmt":"2023-03-04T23:31:01","slug":"figure-emerges-from-stealth-with-the-first-images-of-its-humanoid-robot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/03\/figure-emerges-from-stealth-with-the-first-images-of-its-humanoid-robot","title":{"rendered":"Figure emerges from stealth with the first images of its humanoid robot"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Humanoid robots are one of those ideas that never truly goes out of style \u2014 it does, however, tend to ebb and flow across the decades. Whatever you happen to think about the project or the company that built it, Tesla\u2019s Optimus prototype has revived the conversation around the form factor and efficacy and viability of general-purpose robots. Boston Dynamics founder Marc Raibert told me in an interview this week<\/a>, \u201cI thought that they\u2019d gotten a lot more done than I expected, and they still have a long way to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also reopened the debate. When I spoke to Playground Global partner Peter Barrett last week, he was quick to point out that our bodies aren\u2019t exactly the hallmark of efficiency or product design, even if they made us sufficiently capable of outsmarting or out-running a wooly mammoth back in the day. The flip side of that conversation certainly makes sense however: We built our environment with us in mind, so it follows that we\u2019d make robots in our image to perform our jobs.<\/p>\n

Figure<\/a>, which comes out of stealth this week, is very much in the second camp. Back in September, we broke the news<\/a> of the startup\u2019s existence. Founded by Archer co-founder Brett Adcock (who has also funded the company to the tune of $100 million), the startup is spending lot of time and money to build a general-purpose bipedal humanoid robot. It\u2019s not an easy dream in any respect, of course. That no one has yet managed to crack the code certainly isn\u2019t for lack of trying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Humanoid robots are one of those ideas that never truly goes out of style \u2014 it does, however, tend to ebb and flow across the decades. Whatever you happen to think about the project or the company that built it, Tesla\u2019s Optimus prototype has revived the conversation around the form factor and efficacy and viability [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":359,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1878,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-159552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-employment","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/359"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159552\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}