Just when you thought the humanoid robot hype machine might be slowing its pace for a pit stop, Figure AI, Inc. CEO Brett Adcock decided to chuck another log on the fire by teaching one to drive. In a typically understated post on X, Adcock shared a video of a Figure humanoid behind the wheel, answering the rhetorical question that practically answered itself: “Would you ever put a humanoid in a car to drive it?”
The video shows a Figure robot, most likely the Figure 01 model, serenely trundling around what appears to be a company car park in an electric utility vehicle. The robot deftly manages the pedals for acceleration and braking, but let’s not get too carried away—it’s steering with a knob attached to the wheel, rather than the nuanced grip of a seasoned getaway driver. This is less Grand Theft Auto and more Grand Theft Golf Cart. Still, the demonstration marks another impressive tick on the company’s rapidly expanding CV of accomplishments, which already includes a high-profile partnership with BMW for factory work.
Why is this important?
While teaching a robot to navigate a souped-up golf buggy might seem a bit trivial in an age of incredibly sophisticated autonomous vehicles, this demonstration is a potent symbol of progress in general-purpose robotics. The goal here isn’t to build a better car, but to build a robot that can operate the tools and machines in a world specifically designed for humans—and let’s face it, a vehicle is just a very complex, mobile tool. This ability to interact seamlessly with our existing infrastructure, from the humble coffee machine to the family car, is the ultimate prize for humanoids. Figure is clearly signalling that its AI models are becoming increasingly capable of tackling the dynamic, often unstructured tasks that define the real world, moving one crucial step closer to the “billion-unit level” of deployment Adcock famously envisions.