Figure's Humanoid Robot Tackles Dishwashing: A Leap Towards Versatile AI-Powered Home Assistance

Figure humanoid robot masters dishwashing after folding laundry

What makes the feat remarkable is that the system didn't require any new algorithms or task-specific engineering to pull it off. Instead, the same general-purpose model that powers other tasks extended naturally to this one through new data. In practice, the humanoid can stack, sort, and arrange dishes with care that mirrors human handling. This achievement brings it closer to being an everyday household helper. For humans, loading a dishwasher is something they can even do easily. A humanoid, however, has to face many challenges in this case. The main hurdles include picking up the dishes between fingers, arranging them neatly in the dishwasher, reorienting objects to fit them in the dishwasher, and using a firm yet gentle grip to ensure they don't slip through the fingers or break due to intense pressure. Using the Helix AI model, the Figure 02 humanoid showed finger-level precision while working with the dishes, despite placing them in racks with only centimeter-scale error tolerance. On top of that, the humanoid handled different types of dishwasher loads, from dishes to glasses, adapting itself to execute the task with perfection.

This humanoid robot has done the laundry, now watch it do the dishes

Having nailed the laundry -- including loading the washer and later folding everything up -- the Figure 02 humanoid robot is now taking on the task of loading the dishwasher. And it seems to have nailed that, too. California-based Figure has just shared a video (below) showing its talented humanoid robot autonomously putting plates, dishes, and drinking glasses into the dishwasher. While humans can usually load a dishwasher free of any calamities, for a humanoid robot the task presents a greater challenge. Oddly shaped breakables have to be handled with great care, and Figure 02 appears to pass with flying colors as it carefully grips each one with its robotic fingers before finding a space in the dishwasher. Recommended Videos To achieve the everyday household task, the humanoid robot is relying on Helix, Figure's AI-powered Vision Language Action (VLA) model. "At first glance, loading a dishwasher sounds like a simple task -- just pick up each object and place it in the dishwasher," Figure said in a post about the robot's latest skill. "But in reality, dishwasher loading bundles together many difficult problems in robotics: dishes often need to be isolated from cluttered stacks, reoriented, or handed off between two arms working in sync; slippery or fragile items demand fingertip-level precision; and dishwasher racks provide only centimeter-scale tolerance for error." It adds: "On top of that, every load is different -- novel objects, messy starting states, and unexpected collisions mean the system must constantly adapt and recover while maintaining robust performance." Figure says that while dishwasher loading, towel folding, and its other skill of sorting packages may appear to involve very different processes, its Helix-powered robot can take on all of these tasks with the same adaptable AI system. It says that this particular capability represents "another step toward scalable humanoid intelligence: a single system that can incrementally learn new capabilities with additional data, building toward broader applicability without special-case engineering." In other words, a robot butler could be closer than we think. First, however, we need to see it do the vacuuming, take out the trash, and perform a spot of light dusting -- then we'll know it's really making progress.