Figure 02

What it is

Figure 02 is an electric humanoid robot that Figure introduced on 6 August 2024^[2]. The company's official site lists it at 5 ft 6 in tall and 70 kg in weight, with a 20 kg payload, a 5 hour runtime, a top speed of 1.2 m/s and an electric drive system^[1]. On that site Figure calls it "the world's first commercially-viable autonomous humanoid robot"^[1]; the phrase is the company's own description of its product rather than an outside assessment.

Humanoid robots are built to work in spaces already designed for people: two legs, two arms, hands, and the expectation that the machine can pick up existing tools and equipment. Two figures in the specification bear directly on that promise. Payload, 20 kg here, is the mass the arms are rated to carry while the robot stays stable. Runtime, 5 hours here, is how long it can work on a battery charge. Those limits help decide whether a machine can put in a useful shift or only a demonstration.

Redesign

A launch report described Figure 02 as a redesign of both hardware and software. Cabling was concealed inside the body, and a matte-black exterior replaced the chrome finish of Figure 01^[2]. The report also said the battery grew 50% to 2.25 kWh, and that Figure hoped the robot could work about 20 hours a day^[2]. The 5 hour runtime on the specification sheet and the roughly 20 hours a day the company said it hoped for are not the same measurement: one describes a single charge, the other a working day.

Hands, cameras and compute

The fourth-generation hands had 16 degrees of freedom and could grasp 25 kg^[2]. Degrees of freedom are the independent motions a mechanism can make; the more a hand has, the more ways it can shape itself around an object, which is why hands are among the hardest parts of a humanoid robot to get right. Six RGB cameras were mounted on the head, chest and back^[2], giving the robot views of what is ahead of it, of the area in front of its torso where its hands work, and of what is behind it. Figure said onboard compute and AI inference were three times that of Figure 01^[2]; doing that processing on the machine itself means perception and control decisions do not depend on a network link to an external computer.

Work at BMW

Figure said the robots were tested in BMW's Spartanburg plant, inserting sheet-metal parts into fixtures^[2][3]. That is a narrow, repetitive job with a clear success condition — the part is either seated correctly or it is not — which makes it a practical first target for a general-purpose machine. Figure later reported an 11-month deployment at BMW, with more than 90,000 parts loaded, more than 1,250 hours of runtime and a contribution to the production of more than 30,000 X3 vehicles^[3].

Retirement

Following the release of Figure 03, Figure said it had begun the fleet-wide retirement of Figure 02^[3][4]. A robot announced, tested inside a customer's factory, credited with a stretch of production work and then retired in favour of a successor is the cycle the company's own accounts describe.