If you dread making your bed every morning, a robot could do the job for you.
In the video released Friday, two Figure AI humanoids enter a minimalist bedroom and begin cleaning up. One person hangs up their coat, the other closes their laptop and puts down their headphones. Then move to the other side of the bed, adjust the pillows, and adjust the comforter into place.
With a nod of their heads, the two humanoids adjust the lifting, positioning, and pulling back of the comforter to create a suitable bed within two minutes.
Figures described the milestone in a blog post as “an important first demonstration of a future we hope to become commonplace: intelligent humanoids coordinating with each other to solve common goals in the human environment.”
Making a bed may be a simple chore for humans, but it is extremely difficult for robots. Figure AI said three challenges made the task particularly difficult.
First, two humanoids in one room are not just two robots working in parallel. Every action that one robot takes must be understood by the other robot. Second, the comforter has no fixed shape and no clear division between one robot’s side and the other robot’s side. Each robot must anticipate what the other robots will do and keep adjusting as the fabric folds, drapes, and glides under control. Third, the robot must move around the room and switch tasks.
“To be clear, there is no explicit messaging between these robots, and the robots coordinate their movements entirely visually, such as by nodding their heads,” Corey Lynch, director of AI at Figure AI, wrote in X, emphasizing that the video was at 1x speed and that the robots operated completely autonomously without remote control.
Figure AI said it trained the Helix 02 model it introduced earlier this year on new data, allowing the robot to handle more complex tasks such as opening doors, pushing furniture, and hanging clothes. The company did not say when the humanoid robot would be available to consumers.
Figure AI has raised over $1 billion and is valued at $39 billion. The company faces stiff competition from Tesla, which is developing its own humanoid robot, Optimus.
Last year, Figure AI CEO Brett Adcock announced the end of collaboration with Figure AI investor OpenAI on developing AI models for robots. Adcock ended the partnership less than a year later, after OpenAI told him it planned to pursue humanoids internally.
Mr Adcock said he was working on “building a new breed” of robots that can replicate and share knowledge with each other.
“It will happen in our lifetime,” he said last year.
Other startups are also training robots to do household chores. For example, AI training startups like Encord and Micro1 say they’re seeing a surge in demand from robotics companies for high-quality training data. To create that data, you need to film yourself doing tasks like folding laundry or loading the dishwasher.