A video of humanoid robots flinging themselves, one after another, into a vat of molten steel, has gone viral. It is almost impossible to watch as each of them approaches the end of the diving board and launches itself into the bubbling cauldron beneath. How have we allowed such wanton destruction to happen?
How do you dispose of a fleet of robots that have outlived their usefulness? This was the problem faced by Brett Adcock, founder and CEO of US Robotics manufacturer Figure AI once Figure 02 Robots had been superseded. Recycling is clearly not a possibility due to the time it would take to disassemble the robots in house and the need to protect the secrets of proprietary hardware.
So Adcock sought the wisdom of the crowd and wrote in a post to X that the robot deserved a “proper sendoff”, adding, “any ideas?” It was none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger who came up with the best suggestion – melt them.
This posed another problem. Because of their Lithium Iron Batteries, no foundry in the USA or Mexico was willing to risk their expensive equipment. Instead it was a foundry in the Imatra, Finland that was the final destination for the robots – and for the witness to their destruction – the Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Prior to leaving their San Jose facility the Figure 02 robots acquired an additional skill – jumping from a height onto a target the size of a bucket of molten steel. They did this by imitating the movements of stunt artists.
As explained in the video, at the foundry, three massive graphite electrodes power a 75-ton electric arc furnace to melt solid steel scrap. The team had just 24 hours and six melts to get it right, and each melt had only a 20-minute window before the molten steel cooled and formed a hard crust. Despite the extreme heat and electromagnetic fields, the robots ran their AI policies seamlessly, even as camera equipment and other electronics failed in this environment and autonomously jumped for self-destruction.
The metal bars salvaged from the exercise are now back in the US where they are being transformed into a limited series of artifacts commemorating F.02 which are available to order on the Figure AI Merch Shop.
Adcock may have done this as a publicity stunt to raise the profile of the forthcoming Figure 04, but what about the potential backlash? Who can watch this video without feeling acute distress about the fate of redundant robots. The fact that they look like humans and walk like humans, just makes it impossible not to feel terrified. A more humane mode of disposal has to be found.
More Information
Related Articles
Meet Figure 03: Dishwasher-Loading Robot
To be informed about new articles on I Programmer, sign up for our weekly newsletter, subscribe to the RSS feed and follow us on Facebook or Linkedin.
Comments
Make a Comment or View Existing Comments Using Disqus
or email your comment to: comments@i-programmer.info