Figure demos zero-shot robot tasks in 30 Bay Area homes; expert says not deployable yet
m_wulfmeier · x · 2026-09-18
Figure CEO Brett Adcock showed the robot generalization 'holy grail': the team rented 30 homes in the Bay Area and ran tasks in unseen environments without any new training.
Waymo research lead mwulfmeier called the results enormously impressive but added a sobering caveat: 'how reliably you can render any next deployment is THE key question of physical AI right now.' He read the zero-shot results as evidence for the importance of post-training — impressive research, but not deployable. The demo highlights both the generalization potential and the gap between demo and reliable deployment.
Related event: Figure Unveils Helix 2.5: Zero-Shot Housework Across 30 Unfamiliar Homes(21 posts)→
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