A Billion Dollars in Funding: Figure’s Humanoid Robots

Video Friday is your weekly number of superior robotics movies, collected by your folks at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We additionally submit a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics occasions for the following few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.

ACTUATE 2025: 23–24 September 2025, SAN FRANCISCO

CoRL 2025: 27–30 September 2025, SEOUL

IEEE Humanoids: 30 September–2 October 2025, SEOUL

World Robot Summit: 10–12 October 2025, OSAKA, JAPAN

IROS 2025: 19–25 October 2025, HANGZHOU, CHINA

Take pleasure in right now’s movies!

A billion {dollars} is some huge cash. And that is precise cash, not only a valuation. however Figure already had some huge cash. So what are they going to have the ability to do now that they weren’t already doing, I ponder?

[ Figure ]

Robots usually reach simulation however fail in actuality. With PACE, we introduce a scientific method to sim-to-real switch.

[ Paper ]

Anthropomorphic robotic fingers are important for robots to study from people and function in human environments. Whereas most designs loosely mimic human hand kinematics and construction, attaining the dexterity and emergent behaviors current in human fingers, anthropomorphic design should lengthen to additionally match passive compliant properties whereas concurrently strictly having kinematic matching. We current ADAPT-Teleop, a system combining a robotic hand with human-matched kinematics, pores and skin, and passive dynamics, together with a robotic arm for intuitive teleoperation.

[ Paper ]

This robotic can stroll with none digital parts in its physique, as a result of the facility is transmitted by way of wires from motors concentrated outdoors of its physique. Additionally, this robotic’s entrance and rear legs are optimally coupled and might stroll with simply 4 wires.

[ JSK Lab ]

Thanks, Takahiro!

5 groups of Los Alamos engineers competed to construct the last word hole-digging robotic canine in a current engineering sprint. In simply days, groups programmed their robot dogs to dig, designing customized “paws” from supplies like sheet steel, foam, and 3D-printed polymers. The paws mimicked animal digging behaviors—from paddles and snowshoes to dew claws—and helped the robots keep away from sinking right into a 30-gallon soil bucket. Groups raced to see whose canine might dig the most important gap and dig underneath a fence the quickest.

[ Los Alamos ]

This work presents UniPilot, a compact hardware-software autonomy payload that may be built-in throughout various robotic embodiments to allow resilient autonomous operation in GPS-denied environments. The system integrates a multimodal sensing suite together with lidar, radar, imaginative and prescient, and inertial sensing for sturdy operation in circumstances the place unimodal approaches could fail. Numerous experiments are performed throughout various environments and on quite a lot of robotic platforms to validate the mapping, planning, and secure navigation capabilities enabled by the payload.

[ NTNU ]

Thanks, Kostas!

KAIST Humanoid v0.5. Developed on the DRCD Lab, KAIST, with a management coverage educated by way of reinforcement learning.

[ KAIST ]

I similar to the decided little hops.

[ AgileX ]

I’m all the time just a little bit suspicious of robotics labs which can be exceptionally clear and arranged.

[ PNDbotics ]

Er, has PAL Robotics ever really seen a kangaroo…?

[ PAL ]

See Spots push. Push, Spots, push.

[ Tufts ]

Coaching humanoid robots to hike might speed up growth of embodied AI for duties like autonomous search and rescue, ecological monitoring in unexplored locations, and extra, say College of Michigan researchers who developed an AI mannequin that equips humanoids to hit the paths.

[ Michigan ]

I’m dangerously near not being impressed by breakdancing humanoid robots.

[ Fourier ]

This, although, would impress me.

[ Inria ]

On this interview, Clone’s co-founder and CEO Dhanush Radhakrishnan discusses the corporate’s path to creating the artificial people straight out of science fiction.

(If YouTube brilliantly makes an attempt to auto-dub this for you, swap the audio monitor to authentic [which YouTube thinks is Polish] and the video will nonetheless be in English.)

[ Clone ]

This documentary takes you behind the scenes of the HMND 01 Alpha launch: the breakthroughs, the failures, and the late nights of constructing the U.Okay.’s first industrial humanoid robotic.

[ Humanoid ]

What’s the position of moral issues within the growth and deployment of robotic and automation applied sciences, and what are the tasks of researchers to make sure that these applied sciences advance in methods which can be clear, truthful, and aligned with the broader well-being of society?

[ ICRA@40 ]

Humanoids characterize probably the most versatile robotic platform, able to strolling, manipulating, and collaborating with folks in human-centered environments. But regardless of current advances, constructing humanoids that may function reliably in the true world stays a basic problem. Progress has been hindered by difficulties in whole-body management, sturdy perceptive reasoning, and bridging the sim-to-real hole. On this speak, I’ll focus on how scalable simulation and studying can systematically overcome these boundaries.

[ UPenn ]