As if Elon Musk needed another reason OpenAI shirt. Figure, a startup working with OpenAI to develop humanoid robots, released a new video on Wednesday. It truly surpasses anything Tesla has demonstrated to date with its Optimus Prime robot.
The video pictured is available at Youtube, shows a human interacting with a robot named “Figure 01” (pronounced “Figure 1”). The human engages in a natural-sounding conversation with the robot, asking it to first identify what it is looking at.
“I see a red apple on a plate in the center of the table, a clothes drying rack with cups and plates, and you’re standing nearby with your hands on the table,” Figure 01 explains in a human-like tone.
The human wanted to eat something, so Figure 01 handed him the apple. The human then introduces some trash into the environment and asks the robot to explain why it does this while picking up the trash. Of course, there will be some lag time as the robot processes the instructions, but it will execute them perfectly.
“Up there. So I gave you the apple because it was the only, uh, edible item I could offer you from the table,” Figure 01 said, interrupting a disturbingly human mid-sentence “Well”.
The final trick is for the human to ask Figure 01 what will happen next based on the position of the plate on the table. The robot said the dishes would most likely be put on the clothes drying rack next. The human verified this hypothesis verbally and asked Figure 01 to do so by first picking up the cup and turning it over, then placing it back in place, demonstrating incredible dexterity and precision. Another demonstration of accuracy came when Figure 01 placed the plate on the appropriate ridges on the drying rack.
It’s really worth watching the full video embedded below to get a proper understanding of what’s going on.
You might be asking yourself, what’s the big deal?Of course, Musk announced his robot with someone in 2021 Wearing robot costume, but hasn’t Tesla made incredible progress since then, rivaling OpenAI and Figure? Not really.
Tesla’s Optimus Prime can move around, pick up eggs, and even fold laundry. That’s impressive, right? Unless you take Elon Musk’s robot demo video at face value. For example, take a closer look at January’s laundry folding video. Did you notice something strange in the lower right corner of that impressive video?
Still don’t see it? What if we add a big red arrow? Did you notice that the hand moving in and out of view matched perfectly with the movements of Optimus Prime’s right hand?
Yes, this appears to be someone using remote control to make moves, and then Optimus Prime mimicking those moves. Humans essentially fold the shirt, or “fold” as it is sometimes called, remotely. Waldo.
Since then, humans have been building Waldo robots At least in the 1940s, and have given teleoperation capabilities to humanoid robots since at least the 1960s. To be honest, the technology displayed by Tesla’s Optimus is no more impressive than the audio animatronics Disney produced for the 1964 New York World’s Fair, shown below.
If you look closely, the serendipity in Tesla’s video is why Figure and OpenAI’s robots are essentially light years ahead. That’s because Figure 01 doesn’t use any tricks like remote operation, Figure co-founder Brett Adcock confirmed Wednesday.
“This video shows a neural network end-to-end. No footage,” Adcock write on X. “Also, this was shot continuously at 1.0x speed.”
Can Musk and the Tesla team solve this problem? Absolutely. But as Wednesday’s video clearly shows, Adcock and Figure’s personnel have built a huge lead.Tu assembled a team consisting of people from the following companies Boston Dynamics and DeepMind They know exactly what they are doing.
Corey Lynch, who works on artificial intelligence at Figure, is clearly proud of his work in a tweet on Wednesday in which he described the latest progress while also pointing out Figure 01 Not remotely operated. Figure employees have repeatedly emphasized that their robots are not operated by humans, which can only be interpreted as a dig at Musk, who recently sued OpenAI.
“Even a few years ago, I thought that having a full conversation with a humanoid robot as it planned and executed its own fully learned behavior would be something we would have to wait decades to see,” Lynch wrote. Obviously, a lot of things have changed.”
Even compared to the relatively pristine days of 2015, things have definitely changed. Darpa Robotics Competition Still using remote control machines. We’ll have to wait and see if Musk’s team can catch up – by 2015.