OpenAI Enters Humanoid Robotics Sector

OpenAI's investment in Figure, as well as the entry of major players such as Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Bezos Expeditions, strengthens this trend. This development also poses a threat to Elon Musk's Tesla Optimus, which explains his lawsuit against OpenAI.

Ultraman is optimistic about the future of robots. "In terms of physical hardware, there is finally a feasible foundation, and this is the first time I have seen hope of achieving this goal. A truly exciting new platform is under construction," he said, adding that at some point, they will be able to use their artificial intelligence models, as well as their language and video understanding, to accomplish amazing things with robots.

Interestingly, Figure's mission aligns well with Ultraman's mission. Ultraman's mission is to create versatile humanoid robots to address labor shortages, automate undesirable jobs, and enhance human capabilities and productivity. Brett Adcock, CEO of Figure, said, "We are experiencing a large-scale labor crisis, with over 10 million jobs in the United States that people don't want to do." He added that the company loses 50% to 150% of its employees every year and cannot find people to do these jobs.

He said, "They have no idea how to solve these problems to achieve automation. We believe that with Figure, the demand for what we are doing is almost limitless. I can say that we aim to be one of the first companies in the world to commercially deploy our products on a large scale."

Earlier this year, the robotics company released an update for the Figure-01 humanoid robot, demonstrating the skill of brewing coffee, which was learned from observing humans. Adcock wrote on X, "If it's not obvious yet, Figure's humanoid robot is the ultimate deployment vehicle for AGI."

OpenAI's Journey into Robotics

This is not OpenAI's first foray into the field of robotics. In 2019, OpenAI successfully trained a robotic hand to solve a Rubik's Cube autonomously. Despite this achievement, the dedicated robotics team was disbanded in July 2021. Additionally, the company had previously invested $23.5 million in 1X Technologies.

Ultraman said, "We started the robotics project too early, so we had to put it on hold. We encountered problems with poor simulators, broken tendons, and more." He added that over time, they realized they needed intelligence and cognition first before figuring out how to adapt it to the physical world.

OpenAI's latest text-to-video generation model, Sora, can also simulate certain aspects of humans, animals, and environments in the physical world during large-scale training. While the rest of the world sees Sora as just a video generation tool, for OpenAI, it is an attempt to create simulated reality that could lead to AGI.

In simple terms, the idea is to create a world model, similar to what Meta CEO Yann LeCun and autonomous driving company Wavye are striving to achieve.

Peter Welinder, VP of Product and Partnerships at OpenAI, said, "We have always planned to return to the field of robotics, and we see an avenue through Figure to explore what humanoid robots can achieve under the drive of highly capable multimodal models."

CognosysAi, co-founder of Sully, wrote, "AGI will ultimately manifest itself in some form of robot, whether it's Optimus (Tesla), Figure (OpenAI), or another company (seems like there are many)."

Threatening Optimus

There isn't much difference between Optimus and Figure. Figure 01 stands at 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighs 60 kilograms, while Optimus is slightly taller at 5 feet 8 inches and weighs 73 kilograms. Both can handle payloads of up to 20 kilograms.

Meanwhile, Tesla recently announced significant improvements to its humanoid robot, which appears to be getting closer to Musk's vision for Optimus. Last year, Optimus only waved on stage. Now, it can pick up and sort items, do yoga, and navigate its surroundings.

There's also Boston Dynamics, which has two robots—Atlas (bipedal) and Spot (quadruped)—used in various industries such as logistics, manufacturing, construction, and inspection.

"Boston Dynamics is now primarily owned by Hyundai. I believe Hyundai's expertise in manufacturing cars can be applied to robot production, resulting in cheaper and more reliable products," said Boston Dynamics founder Marc Raibert.

Recently, Amazon has also been testing humanoid robots in some of its warehouses in the United States, which is a significant step in its automation efforts. The tech giant aims to optimize efficiency by introducing robots called "Digit" that can mimic human movements and perform tasks such as moving and handling items.

The prospect of freeing humans from routine work doesn't seem bad. Who knows, the future of work may involve more humanoid robots and fewer humans.