- Figure 03 redesigns the humanoid robot for the home
- It has articulated hands that even include cameras and can do dishes and fold laundry
- There’s no timeline for the availability of home introduction
Watching Figure 03 clean, fold laundry, fill a dishwasher, serve, and play with the family dog, I was struck by the still uncanny blend of human-like activity and fundamental inhumanness. It’s that mix that makes this moment so pivotal. We are on the precipice of a home humanoid robot revolution, and Figure AI might be leading the slightly discomfiting, unsteady way.
Figure AI unveiled its latest robot update on Thursday (October 9) with a lengthy video and a designation as one of Time Magazine’s Best Innovations of 2025. They’re featuring Figure 03 on the cover, which I think oversells the robot’s potential for home use and, even Time admits, “Figure 03 will not be ready for home use upon its release.”
It’s not that Figure AI hasn’t made significant progress on its five-foot, six-inch automaton. The all-electric Figure 03 looks and works differently from its predecessor, Figure 02, which was introduced just over a year ago.
Much of Figure 03’s enhancements are specifically designed for better, safer home use. Even the look of it is softer and less out of place in a household setting; almost the entire body is now covered in a soft mesh fabric.
The fully-articulated hands are also fabric-covered and even include palm cameras that give each hand a wide-angle view of its target and activities (there’s also a camera in the head). The finger tips are also softer, with each finger featuring the company’s new tactile sensor. These features likely account for Figure 03’s ability, as shown in the video, to collect plates from a table and then carefully sweep debris with one hand while catching it with the other.
Those new hands and cameras probably make it possible for Figure 03 to effectively, if awkwardly, fold a shirt as well as slowly rinse dishes and place them in the dishwasher. Its body looks human, but for some tasks, it’s often half-crouched in ways that would cause most humans severe back trouble. For all we know, the algorithms may say this is the best way for Figure 03 to work.
Figure AI made the new robot with 9% less mass for better home maneuverability. In the video, we see it walk off its wireless charging station (it’s rated for five hours of operation per charge), and then navigate what I’d describe as an expansive, open-plan home (good luck, for instance, in my cluttered home). There is also some more foam in the robot joints to avoid pinching human fingers.
I notice how carefully the robot moves in the home video. It’s slow (2.6mph) and a bit plodding. Perhaps this is by design and for safety. In the factory portion of the video, Figure 03 appears to work much more quickly.
An AI backbnone
While Figure AI didn’t demonstrate this in the video, Figure 03’s rapid development is propelled in part by generative AI, and it features a “vision-language-action AI” according to the company. It uses OpenAI models and Nvidia‘s robotics stacks to help it understand spoken commands and the world around it. It’s hard to imagine Figure 03’s quick rise to a near-home robotics helper without the ongoing Generative AI revolution.
Numerous questions remain about Figure 03. Figure AI has offered no timeline for home delivery. In fact, it’s likely that Figure 03 will arrive at the factory first. Pricing in any market is a question mark, though you should expect it would be in the tens of thousands of dollars.
Figure Ai faces stiff competition from Tesla Optimus, Unitree G1, and Boston Dynamics Atlas, among others. Yet none of them are anywhere close to being in the home.
As Figure AI admitted last year when it first unveiled Figure 01, “We face high risk and extremely low chances of success.” That might well be said for the entire humanoid robotics industry, at least in the short term.
In the long term, though, there is an increasingly good chance that future generations will consider home robotic helpers like Figure 03 the norm, even if we still find them creepy as hell.
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lance.ulanoff@futurenet.com (Lance Ulanoff)
