For a long time, useful robots seemed far removed from people’s everyday lives. Yes, there are thousands of robots in car factories that weld and lift car bodies, or bring shelves to the packing station at Amazon. But humanoid robots that carry out tasks that humans do today with dexterity?
This is currently changing, as several dozen companies worldwide are making rapid progress in the development of just such humanoids. One of these companies is based in San José, California: Figure.AI. Although the company has only been around for just under two years, its robots are so impressive that the company has just completed a financing round that values the company at no less than 39.5 billion dollars.
I have already presented some impressive developments including videos (such as this one and this one) here, but in the meantime, Figure CEO Brett Adcock has followed up with a new video. This one shows a Figure robot sorting parcels and letters.
The robot not only picks parcels, packages and letters one by one from a realistically chaotic pile, it also turns them over so that the letter label is facing downwards and can be scanned. He also smoothes out the parcels so that the label lies flat.
Figure CEO Brett Adcock was recently invited to Bloomberg for an interview, here is a recording of the almost 20-minute conversation.
