ChatGPT-maker
Figure is less than two years old and doesn't have a commercial product but is persuading influential tech industry backers to support its vision of shipping billions of human-like robots to the world's workplaces and homes.
“If we can just get humanoids to do work that humans are not wanting to do because there’s a shortfall of humans, we can sell millions of humanoids, billions maybe,” Figure CEO
For
Financial terms of the deal between Figure and
That will help “accelerate Figure’s commercial timeline” by enabling its robots to “process and reason from language,” according to Figure's announcement. The company announced in January an agreement with
Robotics experts differ on the usefulness of robots shaped in human form. Most robots employed in factory and warehouse tasks might have some animal-like features — a robotic arm, finger-like grippers or even legs — but aren't truly humanoid. That's in part because it's taken decades for robotics engineers to develop effective robotic legs and arms.
“We started robots too early and so we had to put that project on hold," Altman told Gates, noting that “we were dealing with bad simulators and breaking tendons" that were distracting from the company's other work.
“We realized more and more over time that what we really first needed was intelligence and cognition and then we could figure out how we could adapt it to physicality,” he said.
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