A Billion Dollars in Funding: Figure’s Humanoid Robots

Video Friday this is your weekly selection of amazing robotics videos collected by your friends on IEEE spectrum robotics. We're also posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events to turn on.

ACTION 2025: September 23-24, 2025, SAN FRANCISCO.

CORL 2025: September 27–30, 2025, SEOUL

IEEE Humanoids: September 30 – October 2, 2025, SEOUL.

World Robot Summit: October 10–12, 2025, OSAKA, JAPAN

I'll go in 2025: October 19-25, 2025, HANGZHOU, CHINA

Enjoy today's videos!

A billion dollars is a lot of money. And this is real money, not just an estimate. But Figure there was already a lot of money. I wonder what they can now do that they haven’t done before?

[ Figure ]

Robots often succeed in simulation but fail in reality. With PACE, we are introducing a systematic approach to making SIM cards a reality.

[ Paper ]

Anthropomorphic robotic arms are necessary for robots to learn from humans and operate in human environments. While most designs broadly mimic the kinematics and structure of the human hand, providing the dexterity and emergent behavior found in human hands, anthropomorphic design must expand to also accommodate passive compliance properties while simultaneously ensuring strong kinematic compliance. We present ADAPT-Teleop, a system that combines a robotic arm with human kinematics, skin and passive dynamics, and robotic arm for intuitive teleoperation.

[ Paper ]

This robot can walk without any electronic components in its body because the energy is transmitted through wires from motors concentrated outside his body. In addition, the front and back legs of this robot are optimally connected and can move with just four wires.

[ JSK Lab ]

Thank you, Takahiro!

Five teams of engineers from Los Alamos competed to create the perfect robotic hole-digging dog. sprint. In just a few days, the teams programmed their robot dogs dig, creating customized “paws” from materials such as sheet metal, foam and 3D printed ones. polymers. The paws mimicked animal digging behavior—from paddles and snowshoes to claws—and helped the robots avoid falling into a 30-gallon bucket of dirt. The teams competed to see whose dog could dig the biggest hole and dig under the fence the fastest.

[ Los Alamos ]

This work introduces UniPilot, a compact hardware-software autonomous payload that can be integrated into various robot implementations to provide resilient autonomous operation in GPS-deprived environments. The system integrates a complex of multimodal sensors, including lidarradar, vision and inertial sensing to perform reliably in environments where unimodal approaches might fail. A large number of experiments are conducted in different environments and on different robotic platforms to test the mapping, planning and safe navigation capabilities provided by the payload.

[ NTNU ]

Thank you, Kostas!

KAIST Humanoid v0.5. Developed in the laboratory of DRCD, KAIST, with control policies trained with reinforcement learning.

[ KAIST ]

I just love a bold little hop.

[ AgileX ]

I'm always a little suspicious of robotics labs that are exceptionally clean and organized.

[ PNDbotics ]

Yes, has PAL Robotics ever seen a kangaroo…?

[ PAL ]

See Stains push. Push, Spots, push.

[ Tufts ]

Education humanoid robots The hike could speed up the development of embedded AI for tasks such as autonomous search and rescueenvironmental monitoring in uncharted places and more, say University of Michigan researchers who have developed an artificial intelligence model that allows humanoids to travel along trails.

[ Michigan ]

I'm dangerously close to no longer being impressed by breakdancing humanoid robots.

[ Fourier ]

However, it would impress me.

[ Inria ]

In this interview, Clone co-founder and CEO Dhanush Radhakrishnan discusses the company's path to creating synthetic humans straight from Science fiction.

(If YouTube brilliantly tries to auto-dub this for you, switch the audio track to the original). [which YouTube thinks is Polish] and the video will still be in English.)

[ Clone ]

This documentary takes you behind the scenes of HMND 01 Alpha: the breakthroughs, failures and late nights of creating the UK's first industrial humanoid robot.

[ Humanoid ]

What is the role of ethical considerations in the development and implementation of robotics and automation technologies, and what are the responsibilities of researchers to ensure that these technologies are developed transparently, equitably and in line with the wider welfare of society?

[ ICRA@40 ]

Humanoids represent the most versatile robotic platform, capable of locomotion, manipulation, and collaboration with humans in human-centered environments. However, despite recent advances, creating humanoids that can operate reliably in the real world remains a fundamental challenge. Progress is hampered by difficulties with full-body control, sustained perceptual thinking, and bridging the gap between simulation and reality. In this talk, I will discuss how scalable simulation and learning can systematically overcome these barriers.

[ UPenn ]