Figure 04 is the next major step in Figure AI's humanoid robot evolution, and Brett Adcock is sharing how the company reached this point. At Figure All Hands 2026, the company's founder takes a closer look at the development of Figure 01, Figure 02, Figure 03, and the upcoming Figure 04.
Figure AI has made remarkable progress in humanoid robotics since introducing its first robot in 2023. Each new generation has brought improvements in mechanical engineering, robotic hands, artificial intelligence, movement, and hardware integration.
Figure 01 established the company's foundation for humanoid robot development, while Figure 02 introduced a more advanced design and demonstrated practical applications in BMW manufacturing operations.
Figure 03 brought additional improvements in robotic manipulation, tactile sensing, visual perception, and manufacturing efficiency. These developments are helping Figure work toward humanoid robots capable of operating in factories, workplaces, and eventually homes.
Now attention is shifting toward Figure 04, also known as F.04. Brett Adcock has described the next generation as a potentially major technological leap, building on everything the company has learned from its previous humanoid robots.
This Figure All Hands 2026 presentation offers a look at the company's engineering journey, the evolution of its humanoid robot designs, and the ambitions behind its upcoming generation.
Which generation represents the biggest improvement, and what capabilities would you like to see in Figure 04? Share your thoughts in the comments, like the video, and subscribe to DPC Cars for more humanoid robotics, artificial intelligence, and future technology coverage.
The speaker outlines the hardware evolution of the Figure robot series, detailing the transition from early architectural validation to a highly optimized, AI-ready platform. The progression highlights iterative improvements in actuators, battery integration, and hand dexterity, culminating in the upcoming Figure 4, which is described as a generational leap in humanoid design.
I want to walk through a little bit about where we've
been in hardware and where we're going.
We've now designed and shipped three generations of robots.
Figure one, we designed in 2022.
We had it up and walking under a year since we filed the C-Corp.
At the time, it was the fastest time, I believe,
in human history to be able to do this.
It was largely an architecture validation design.
Are we making the right choices on actuator design,
battery, compute, sensors,
layouts of the kinematics, hands?
um and we really needed to get a robot out
to start using as fast as possible you're laughing
about hands yeah yeah
um and uh we like we learned a ton
um i think one of the best learning lessons
we had was on the hands we built a tendon driven hand
for Figure One uh i thought it was the best
way to reach like human level parity on the hands
and it was um one of the worst decisions we've made
to date and we learned a lot i think actually
it's probably the only group that we built
kind of both types of different hands now
which has been really helpful uh and nobody's caught
this i said uh and uh i told david we were meeting it
was like we had a choice to save like uh we had
a choice when we pivoted away from the hands we had
no um we had no wrist motors so the thought
was that we'd have to go redesign wrist motors now since they
were in tendons form um and we
lost like three months of roadmap or we can take the feet
and we can put them in the forearm so
this robot actually has uh forearms from the foot that's why it looks
so crazy it like literally
bends in the middle of the forearm
and um not a single person in like three years has ever said
anything about it so there you go david i told you'd be fine uh
and then on figure two it was
really like it's like a feature complete robot
in my mind it does it have everything in it that we
think is the right architectures for the robot.
And so figure two improvements we made
is we moved the battery that was on a backpack into the torso.
We then started working on thermals.
We doubled the amount of compute inside the robot,
which is really important for us for Helix.
We have at the time now I think the third generation
hands on this robot that were far, far more improved.
We had basically the exoskeleton structure to take loads
that was different than figure one.
So it's more similar to how you build aircraft today.
And we changed a lot of the sensors,
including the cameras and positions and numbers.
And it's just also a far better looking robot.
We don't have many of them left anymore,
but it's like we arguably made some of the best progress
on Helix here out of the gate with this robot when we had it.
And then we had figure three.
we unveiled about a year ago
or so or more figure three was like was designed for helix like how do
we design a robot that was better for ai
and how do we design a robot that we can actually start
making in higher quantities we reduce the cost
by about by over 90 percent between these two
versions uh we like reduce mass we did two generations more
of hands uh we changed the
sensor layout uh and um overall just a better robot for manufacturing
and ai um and over the
summer we built our number 1000 of this robot um it's fully gold
and baki right now um we're now
working through uh figure four uh we are in full design lock
and we're starting to ship parts um
one thing i want to say about figure four
is when you line all these robots up next to each other
over time it'll be the largest step up we've ever
made between generations i mean probably a year
year and a half ago you would ask like what other ideas we had
for the robot and i've been like
we're out of ideas it's all in like figure three
and now now i can fully say i think we're all out
of ideas on figure four like i just think i know
i just like i have everything possible in that
robot i think we could uh possibly imagine it
is just unbelievable i think um i think the robots
will like you can maybe look at the generations
of robots similar to cell phones like in the early
days the cell phones were like really different
you had like flip phones and nokia phones and then
you got like kind of to the iphone movement
um i think figure four will be like maybe the best
way to think about it's like i think it's
the iphone one version of humanoids it is just
unbelievable and i'm seeing every new robot come out going literally
the opposite direction we are
for figure four so i couldn't be more thrilled
to get it to get it working so uh we've also now
been bringing up figure four actuators now in-house.
these are like figure four actuators
spinning in our dyno lab.
As of the end of this week, we hope to have every actuator, unique
actuator fully characterized and running here at the office.
And we made some pretty large sweeping
changes on the architecture of the actuator.
so it's good to see these working. we still have some
like minor problems to work out as we like,
as we go through the build process, but it's like,
this is happening now. we have parts shipping,
we're bringing some stuff up and this is in the
works we're also doing battery full bring up last
week we brought up 10 full battery packs for the
first time and those packs will start taking loads over
the next few weeks and we'll start
full doing full battery characterization including thermals
and other stuff over the next couple
months and we made some pretty large changes to both the cell
and the battery pack architecture
here as well yeah it's great work team team did
10 full battery bring ups last week okay on the
hand side um we we've like i think
so this is the figure four hand we've made some of the most
radical improvements
on the hand we've we've now designed something i think is like
an engineering engineering masterpiece uh like
a system that is now more complex than the entire
robot has more actuators than the entire robot
and um that is now approaching human parity in terms
of basically like to a human hand.
So this is actually our third version here on the left,
V3, that we've designed of the figure four hand.
And it's got this incredible range of motion.
And what you're seeing here on the right
is our fourth version now of the figure four hand
of a finger now moving on a stand here at the lab.
This is about the size of my finger.
The amount of engineering that's been put in this
is just, it's unbelievable.
