How the Bipedal Humanoid General Purpose Robot will Come Much Faster than You Think!

The Race for a Humanoid General Purpose Robot is Next

So what is a "bhGPR" anyways? Well that's a bipedal humanoid general purpose robot, and they are coming sooner than you think!

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Figure comes out of Stealth.

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Hey Everyone,

While Generative A.I. is generating a lot of exposure to the future of artificial intelligence, humanity as a whole badly needs a humanoid?general purpose robot?(hGPRs) as we are heading for a?demographics winter. This may not be obvious to everyone in 2023.

In 2021, when Tesla?first unveiled?(Go to 2:05.30 of this?YouTube) its humanoid robot concept, Optimus, it was just a human inside a robot suit. In early 2023, a San Francisco robotics startup in stealth mode, Figure, has release some renders of its future “Figure 01” robot.

In the early 2020s we are seeing a lot of innovative new kinds or robots from the food industry to how Boston Dynamics?robots are able to do more?and more. Humanoid looking robots were once so novel and yet everyone from automotive to BigTech companies will be looking more seriously at bringing them to market in the next 15 years.

I was?sad to hear Google?had to fire some robots along with the 12,000 layoffs it made recently, but I know robots come and go and not just jobs. There’s a natural selection of robots too in our emerging tech accelerating world it seems.

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?In 2022,?Tesla’s humanoid looking general purpose?robot didn’t look all that convincing. But I believe from 2023 onwards things will begin to move faster.

On?March 2nd, 2023?Figure did their reveal, which didn’t say all too much.

Figure, an AI Robotics company, emerges from stealth today to unveil Figure 01, the world's first commercially viable general purpose humanoid robot.

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 (BHR).

According to?Figure’s PR:

• This humanoid will have the ability to think, learn, and interact with its environment and is designed for initial deployment into the workforce to address labor shortages and over time lead the way in eliminating the need for unsafe and undesirable jobs.

While A.I. might not empower us in software to be THAT much more productive, eventually robots will be doing many tasks in society and not just walking dogs, delivering groceries or hunting down fugitives.

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It won’t?just be Tesla,?Boston Dynamics?or?Figure?either, the race to a bipedal humanoid general purpose robot is going to be also?about military supremacy?and not just civilian or consumer uses or helping us with unpaid work and chores in the home. That means the incentives to build the first and best one is going to be enormous very soon.

Who needs human soldiers in a world of?drones, drone swarms?and bipedal humanoid robots soldiers (BHRs)?

The total addressable market (TAM) for a general purpose robot is so significant even companies like Tesla are claiming it could be a big segment of their future revenue. You may say Elon Musk is a dreamer, but he’s not the only one.

Robotics startup?Figure, which launched in 2022, has spent the last half year quietly developing a?bipedal humanoid robot. That robot, named?Figure 01, has just been unveiled publicly.

• For now, the system is focused on a wide range of manual labor tasks.
• It’s effectively the sorts of things you think of when you think about industrial robotics: warehouse/fulfillment/logistics, manufacturing and retail are all near the top. “General purpose” is the goal — but again, there are reasons robots have traditionally been built for single, repeatable tasks.
• It’s unclear whether the company plans to take a hardware as platform approach that’s driven products like Spot (TechCrunch).

Companies that are likely going to be interested in the race to general purpose robots include Tesla, Amazon, Google, Hyundai, along with specialized startups and existing?industrial robot makers. This is not counting the many companies in China that will be dedicated to this endeavor. As I continue to cover emerging tech like A.I. and?quantum computing, I see myself covering things like robotics and biotech more and more as the field matures.

Figure’s Robot ‘Figure 01’

“Our vision is to build horizontal hardware that can scale to many applications,” Adcock adds. “We believe humanoids will revolutionize a variety of industries, from corporate labor roles, to assisting individuals in the home, to caring for the elderly, to building new worlds on other planets. However, our first-step applications will be in industries such as manufacturing, shipping and logistics, warehousing and retail, where labor shortages are the most severe. We believe it’s important to optimize our business model to get to revenue as quickly as possible.”

Figure?was founded in 2022 by?Brett Adcock, former Founder of Archer Aviation and Vettery, and plans to revolutionize the field of robotics. " He said very little in his?LinkedIn post?about the reveal.

Team and Pedigree

The Figure team currently consists of 40 industry experts with a combined 100 years of AI and humanoid experience from Boston Dynamics, Tesla, IHMC, GoogleX, Cruise, and Apple SPG. Dr. Jerry Pratt joined Figure as CTO with over 20 years of humanoid experience from IHMC, where he led the team at the DARPA Humanoid Robotics Challenge. The?Figure team completed the full-scale humanoid build in just six months?and will begin testing in the coming months.

I don’t think they or others will have problems attracting funding. Elon Musk has “popularized the idea” ever since his Tesla Optimus announcement.

Typically robots serve a specialized function like cooking robots you see, but the idea of a general purpose robot that can do many different tasks and even potentially learn new ones is going to intersect with LLMs and other advances in such a way that we’ll see that the idea of a GPR will come to the mainstream faster than some people expected.

Robotics startup Figure says it is preparing to launch "the world's first commercially-viable autonomous humanoid robot," a futuristic-looking automaton?standing at 5'6"?tall: the Figure 01.

It seems at 5’6” Figure might have a feminine figure.

When will they be Commercially Viable?

As for the PR around Figure, the goal seems to be an ambitious one: to build a commercially-viable humanoid robot capable of general-purpose use, meaning that it isn't designed with a specific task in mind like sorting products on an assembly line or making a delivery along a predetermined path.

It would say by the 2030s, we’ll have some kinds of bipedal humanoid general purpose robots in our society and more and more on the way. The ratio of robots to humans in the labor force might change drastically decade to decade in the 21st century. So Automation won’t just come in the form of ChatGPT like software agents, but also sooner than you think, in the form of robots that become smarter at performing a variety of basic tasks.

Can we as a civilization do this in seven years? With enough Venture Capital investments and that “AI Arms race” type vibe, you’d be surprised what human beings are capable of accomplishing. 2023 to 2030s is just seven years.

I for one found?Tesla’s Investor day 2023?a bit underwhelming. It’s not clear if Tesla’s Optimus will have a real-world first-mover advantage over actual robotics startups like Figure.

Why so Human Like?

Many believe bipedal humanoid robots will be the dominant kind since they will be accepted in our midsts with greater acceptance. It’s also just easier for them to be able to do stuff.

"We've designed our world for the human form. Hands allow us to open doors and use tools; arms and legs allow us to move efficiently, climb stairs, lift boxes, and more," the company says of its thinking behind mimicking the human body for its robot, rather than following the trend of creating something easier to build. "Figure 01 brings together the dexterity of the human form and cutting edge AI to go beyond single-function robots and lend support across manufacturing, logistics, warehousing, and retail."

• Manufacturing
• Logistics and warehouses
• Retail

"We believe general purpose humanoid robots have far more potential?than single-purpose robots, which are currently ubiquitous within the field," said Brett Adcock, Figure's Founder and CEO.

While A.I. upgrades in software might sound good on paper, it’s general purpose robots that really enable meaningful automation of repetitive tasks to free up humans to do other more social and creative activities.

The myth that automation will create more human jobs is also absurd given that A.I., robots and perhaps even AGI will be taking away our vocations simultaneously both in terms of blue and white collar jobs within our lifetime. You cannot compare automation in the mid 21st century to automation movements of the past, because here it will be just so ubiquitous at all levels of society.

Whatever the case may be, it’s looking like Elon Musk’s Tesla Optimus robot will have some company on the factory floor, in the warehouses, at the data centers and in the retail stores. I believe around 2035, things are going to get kind of crazy in terms of the wave of automation that will hit during the 2035 to 2065 period.

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