Figure Retires Its F.02 Humanoid Robots by Dropping Them Into Molten Steel

Decommissioning a humanoid robot is not as simple as flicking a switch. The machines are built around proprietary designs and contain valuable metals, so Figure needed a retirement plan that would both recover the raw material and guarantee that its technology never ended up in someone else’s hands. The company’s answer was unusually theatrical: send the second-generation F.02 robots plunging into a bath of molten steel.

The search for a willing partner turned out to be the hardest part of the project. According to Figure, no foundry in the United States or Mexico would allow a lithium-ion battery-laden robot to be dropped into its expensive equipment, and the company even approached former MythBusters personnel while hunting for options. The only facility that agreed to take on the job was a foundry in Imatra, Finland.

Before any robot could take the dive, Figure had to teach it how. The team installed large airbags at its San Jose, California campus and trained its machines to leap from the second floor of one of the buildings. Motion capture taken from stunt performers fed a new AI model developed in simulation, allowing the robots to aim accurately for the steel bath at a facility they had never visited in person.

At the Finnish site, three massive graphite electrodes powered a 75-ton electric arc furnace built to melt solid steel scrap. Even under extreme heat and intense electromagnetic fields, the F.02 units continued running their AI software without interruption, while camera gear and other electronics around them failed.

Figure says the metal recovered from the melt was shipped back to the United States with a new purpose: it is being machined into a limited series of commemorative artifacts celebrating the F.02 generation. Only a small number will be produced, giving the robots’ final chapter a tangible form that collectors can keep. The stunt is a striking contrast to the usual quiet retirement of prototype hardware, and it raises questions about how the industry will handle the growing number of humanoid platforms reaching the end of their service life.

The unusual spectacle has also drawn comparisons to science fiction, with observers joking about Terminator-style imagery and wondering what form the commemorative pieces will take.