More AI Advances: Working at BMW By Brian Simpson
AI firm, Figure, has sent its humanoid robots to work at BMW's plant in South Carolina. The capacities of the robot type were illustrated by first having the robot view videos on how to make a cup of coffee. Then apparently of its own steam, or is it oil (?), the robot made a cup of coffee. The robots are now being "trained" to do more complex work at the plant, to replace human workers. Amazon is already using some humanoid robots and plans to use more as the technology improves. After all, it is still early days in the Great Replacement of humans in the workforce.
If all this happens, I hope to see the day when the globalist elites get replaced as well by their AI overloads! But, hopefully the entire dreadful process can be somehow controlled.
"Figure has signed its first commercial deal, and is sending its general-purpose humanoid robots off to start real-world work at BMW's manufacturing plant in South Carolina. Founder and CEO Brett Adcock talks us through this rubber-meets-road moment.
A little over a week ago, the company announced another milestone, releasing video of the Figure 01 robot autonomously making a coffee in response to a verbal command. Adcock called this a "ChatGPT moment" for the company, since the robot figured out how to use that coffee machine on its own after watching a bunch of video demonstrations.
And now, it's delivering on its promise to get the bots out there doing real, useful work ASAP. Under a freshly signed commercial agreement with BMW Manufacturing Co. LLC, Figure has started identifying initial use cases at BMW's Spartanburg plant, and has begun training the bots up for a staged deployment on site.
It's not the first time autonomous humanoids have gone to work alongside humans – Amazon, for example, announced in October that it would start testing the Digit humanoid, from Agility Robotics, as a "mobile manipulator" carrying bins and totes around in warehouse situations where there's not enough space for conveyor belts – and older facilities that haven't already been custom-designed with flat floors suitable for wheeled robots.
But it's of note here that Amazon is an investor in Agility, so it shares an interest in developing the Digit robot. Figure's deal with BMW is purely commercial, and that could make it among the first, if not the first, deal of its kind.
"It's possible that there's real commercial deals out there that haven't been announced," Adcock tells us over a video call, "but all I've seen are test pilots and things. So yeah, this may be the first one, or certainly one of the first ones."
Why BMW? "We really wanted somebody in the car manufacturing side," says Adcock. "There's a lot of robotics experience embedded in the automakers, and they've done a lot of work with humanoids before. Like, Honda with ASIMO, Hyundai owns Boston Dynamics, Tesla with Optimus, Toyota's Robotics Institute, GM did some work to a while back. You go into a factory like BMW's, they have a ton of robotics experience – albeit focused on specific tasks rather than general-purpose."
"We met the [BMW] team about nine months ago," he continues. "They've integrated a lot of robotics into that [Spartanburg] plant. They wanted us to help solve further automation issues with more dextrous and mobile manipulation. We believe in that team and what they're doing, I think they're gonna be really good for us. We have full executive buy-in in Germany, obviously a good brand ... I think we can grow a lot of robots under that umbrella."
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