Figure Helix 02: one neural network controls a humanoid’s whole body from pixels
Confirmed
Importance: major (4 of 5)Status
- Claim
Confirmed
- Our reporting
- High confidence
- Importance
- Major (4 of 5)
- Last verified
- 29 September 2026
Your AI and this story
- GPT-6 AstraIn its training data
- Claude Opus 5.5In its training data
- Gemini 4 HydrogenIn its training data
- Grok 4.7In its training data
It happened before the cutoffs of all four assistants, so it can be in their training data.
Key facts
- Adds System 0: 10M-parameter learned whole-body controller at 1 kHz, trained on 1,000+ hours of retargeted human motion and 200,000+ parallel simulated environments
- System 1 at 200 Hz produces full-body joint targets; System 2 handles semantics and language
- Dishwasher unload/reload: ~4 min end-to-end, walking + manipulation + balance, no resets or human intervention
- First Figure policies using Figure 03 palm cameras and tactile sensing
- 2026-05-13: Figure livestreamed a team of Figure 03 robots sorting barcoded packages on conveyors for a full 8-hour shift, fully autonomous on Helix-02 and swapping in and out of charging stations; Figure claims ‘human performance levels’ (company claim, not independently measured)
- Figure: ‘first demonstration of such long horizon, end-to-end pixels-to-whole body control on a humanoid robot’
What happened
Figure extended its Helix VLA (Feb 2025, upper body only) to full-body control with a new low-level System 0 controller, running on the Figure 03 robot. In May 2026 Figure followed with a demo of two robots tidying a bedroom and making a bed autonomously. On 2026-05-13 Figure livestreamed its robots doing package sorting for a full 8-hour shift with no human intervention, rotating units through charging stations. Figure says they worked at human speed. That is a company claim, and no throughput numbers were independently verified.
Why it matters
It was the first public case of a learned humanoid policy doing minutes-long household tasks end to end from pixels. That set the bar that Gemini Robotics 2 (July) and Helix 2.5 (September) were measured against.
Sources
7 sources from 6 sites. Numbers match the chips in the text.
7 sources: 2 primary, 4 press, 1 reaction
Primary
- Figure: Introducing Helix 02 - Full-Body Autonomyfigure.ai, official
- Figure on X: full 8-hr shift at human performance levels (2026-05-13)x.com, official
Press
- Interesting Engineering: Helix 02 upgrades humanoid controlinterestingengineering.com, press
- eWeek: Figure launches Helix 02eweek.com, press
- Interesting Engineering: Helix-02 robots handle full 8-hour work shiftsinterestingengineering.com, press
- Tech Times: Figure’s Helix-02 robots complete full 8-hour autonomous shiftstechtimes.com, press
Reactions
- YouTube (Figure): Introducing Helix 02youtube.com, video
Changes
- Added the 2026-05-13 8-hour-shift livestream (X post + press)
- Filed
