BMW Will Employ Figure's Humanoid Robot At South Carolina Plant

Figure's first humanoid robot will be coming to a BMW manufacturing facility in South Carolina. TechCrunch reports: BMW has not disclosed how many Figure 01 models it will deploy initially. Nor do we know precisely what jobs the robot will be tasked with when it starts work. Figure did, however, confirm with TechCrunch that it is beginning with an initial five tasks, which will be rolled out one at a time. While folks in the space have been cavalierly tossing out the term "general purpose" to describe these sorts of systems, it's important to temper expectations and point out that they will all arrive as single- or multi-purpose systems, growing their skillset over time. Figure CEO Brett Adcock likens the approach to an app store -- something that Boston Dynamics currently offers with its Spot robot via SDK. Likely initial applications include standard manufacturing tasks such as box moving, pick and place and pallet unloading and loading -- basically the sort of repetitive tasks for which factory owners claim to have difficulty retaining human workers. Adcock says that Figure expects to ship its first commercial robot within a year, an ambitious timeline even for a company that prides itself on quick turnaround times. The initial batch of applications will be largely determined by Figure's early partners like BMW. The system will, for instance, likely be working with sheet metal to start. Adcock adds that the company has signed up additional clients, but declined to disclose their names. It seems likely Figure will instead opt to announce each individually to keep the news cycle spinning in the intervening 12 months.

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