News
What's happening in robotics and AI — curated by the wujec.ai editors.
Figure 03 climbs a vertical ladder on its own
Figure published a video on 1 August 2026 showing its Figure 03 humanoid walking up to a vertical ladder, taking hold of both rails and climbing to a platform without an operator. The company describes the run as fully autonomous, driven by its Helix vision-language-action stack rather than by teleoperation or a scripted motion sequence. A ladder is a harder problem than it looks. The robot has to keep its balance while three or four limbs are simultaneously loaded, judge where the next rung is from its own cameras and correct the grip as its weight shifts. According to Figure, the behaviour comes from the newer Helix 02 architecture, where a low-level network handles balance and contact at high frequency while stereo cameras build a three-dimensional picture of the surroundings. The policy was trained by reinforcement learning in simulation on randomised terrain and, the company says, transferred to the physical robot without extra calibration or fine-tuning. The caveats matter. Figure has not published the technical details behind the demonstration and no third party has reproduced or verified it, so for now the ladder climb is a company video rather than a documented result. It does, however, land in the middle of an ongoing argument in the industry over whether legs are worth their cost: wheeled bases are cheaper, more stable and sufficient for flat warehouse floors, but they cannot reach a mezzanine, a service platform or a roof hatch.
Figure 03 →Figure builds its 1,000th Figure 03 — and paints it gold
Figure has manufactured its one-thousandth Figure 03 humanoid, chief executive Brett Adcock announced on 23 July 2026, marking the unit with a golden finish that observers immediately compared to C-3PO. The number matters less than the slope behind it. In late April 2026 the company said its BotQ plant had reached a throughput of one robot per hour, with just over 350 units built to that point. Crossing a thousand roughly three months later means the line held that rate rather than hitting it once for a press photo — which is the harder part of manufacturing, and the part most humanoid programmes have yet to demonstrate. For context on where the field sits: Tesla's dedicated Optimus line in Fremont was still not confirmed to be producing as of early August 2026, and most humanoid makers remain in pilot deployments rather than series output.
Figure 03 →