Imagine standing on a conveyor belt for ten hours. Every now and then a small package comes by. You have to grab it, turn it and place it on the belt so that the barcode is in the correct position. Sounds easy? After a few hours, your arms will probably burn.
The robotics company Figure AI showed exactly such a competition: a human competed against humanoid robots from the Figure 03 series, or F.03 for short. The result was surprisingly close – and shows how close modern robots can come to humans when it comes to simple warehouse tasks.
What was the task?
The task was clear and easily measurable: pick up packages, recognize the barcode and place the package appropriately on a conveyor belt. The competition ran for 10 hours gross time. This means that the clock ran continuously, even if the person took breaks in between.
The human participant was named Aimé Gérard. He narrowly won: Aimé sorted 12,924 packages, the robot side sorted 12,732 packages. That’s only 192 packages difference. Converted, Aimé needed an average of 2.79 seconds per package, F.03 2.83 seconds per package. Figure boss Brett Adcock then wrote that this would probably be the last time that a human would win such a competition against a robot.
Important: It wasn’t just “a human against a robot”
You have to be very precise here. Aimé was human and had to follow normal work rules. According to Business Insider, he had breaks for things like eating, going to the bathroom, and briefly resting. About five hours later he went to the toilet – and that’s exactly where the robot was able to briefly take the lead.
The robot side had another advantage: it could be organized as a continuous robot operation. In Figures Livestream, one robot sorted while other robots stood in charging stations and could step in when the working robot needed energy. That means: To be fair, it was more like a human with breaks versus a robot shift with the option to rotate – not just a single robot that lasted ten hours without any breaks.
Figure itself writes that Figure 03 can get energy via inductive charging. The charging coils are located in the feet; the robot can step onto a charging station. For commercial applications, Figure even describes “near-continuous operation”, i.e. almost continuous operation when the robot can go to a loading mat in between.
What is Figure 03?
Figure 03 is a humanoid robot. “Humanoid” means: He is built roughly like a human – with arms, hands, legs and a body. This is practical because many places, tools and jobs are made for people.
According to Figure, Figure 03 uses an AI called Helix. You can think of Helix as a digital brain that brings together images, language and movement. The robot should not only “see”, but also take appropriate actions from it. Figure also describes better cameras, sensors in the fingers and hands that should grip things more stably. The finger sensors should even be able to detect very small forces – such as the weight of a paper clip.
Why is the test exciting?
Robots in factories have been around for a long time. However, many of them are permanently mounted robot arms that always make the same movement. Humanoid robots are more difficult: they are supposed to move in an environment that was actually built for humans.
That’s exactly why the packet test is interesting. It doesn’t show everything, but it shows one important thing: a humanoid robot can complete a simple, repeated task fairly quickly over a long period of time. And when multiple robots are used as a team, they can organize breaks, charging and changes better than a single human.
What does the competition not show?
The test does not mean that robots will take over all warehouse jobs tomorrow. A real warehouse is much more complicated. Packages may be wrinkled, heavy, slippery or mislabeled. People are walking around. Stop conveyor belts. Sometimes you have to improvise.
Business Insider quotes robotics expert Ayanna Howard as saying that fully autonomous humanoid robots in real logistics centers are still a long way off. The report cites problems such as packages being placed the wrong way round or packages being pushed off the conveyor belt.
Conclusion
Man won – but only just. Aimé Gérard was faster, although he had to take breaks. The robot side, on the other hand, was able to work almost continuously because robots could switch when loading. That’s exactly what makes the competition so exciting: people are still surprisingly strong at simple grasping tasks. But robots are catching up – not necessarily as individual super robots, but as a well-organized team.
The future will therefore probably not just be “man versus machine”. The question is becoming much more important: Which tasks are performed better by robots and which by humans – and how do they work together safely?
FuxFun
Did you know that viewers gave the Figure robots livestream nicknames like Bob, Frank and Gary? This almost turned a technology test into a small series of robots.
For professionals
For more details, see Figure’s official Figure 03 reveal and Business Insider’s report on the 10-hour competition. The technical points about Helix, the finger sensors and inductive charging are particularly exciting.
Source reference
Sources: Figure AI: “Introducing Figure 03”; Business Insider: “Figure AI had one of its robots race an internally to sort packages. See who lost”; Original reason: WinFuture report on the Figure competition.
Book recommendation
You can find out more about robots and artificial intelligence in the book “Robots & AI” from the SchlauFUX series from Kosmos Verlag. The book is aimed at young explorers and explains robotics and AI in a child-friendly way.
https://www.kosmos.de/de/kosmos-schlaufux-roboter-und-ki_1182437_9783440182437
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