Figure AI says its humanoid robots can now run full eight-hour shifts autonomously using its Helix-02 AI system, marking one of the company’s strongest claims yet around human-scale robotic labor in real-world environments.

In a post on X, the California-based robotics startup wrote: “Watch a team of humanoid robots running a full 8-hr shift at human performance levels. This is fully autonomous running Helix-02.”

The announcement builds on Figure AI’s latest Helix-02 system, a unified neural network that allows humanoid robots to walk, manipulate objects, balance, and coordinate movements continuously using onboard sensors.

Unlike traditional industrial robots that rely on separate controllers for movement and manipulation, Helix-02 combines vision, touch, proprioception, and whole-body control into a single learning system designed for long-horizon tasks in dynamic environments.

Whole-body robot control

According to Figure AI, Helix-02 enables robots to complete multi-minute tasks without resets or human intervention. In one demonstration, a humanoid robot autonomously unloaded and reloaded a dishwasher in a full-sized kitchen over four continuous minutes.

The robotic startup said the system processes inputs from head cameras, palm cameras, fingertip tactile sensors, and full-body proprioception before translating them into full-body joint movements across the legs, torso, arms, wrists, and fingers.

Figure AI also introduced what it calls “System 0,” a learned whole-body controller trained on more than 1,000 hours of human motion data. The company said the model replaces over 109,000 lines of hand-engineered C++ code with a neural control system capable of maintaining stable, human-like motion.

The humanoid robots also demonstrated fine motor tasks including unscrewing bottle caps, extracting pills from organizers, pushing exact syringe volumes, and picking metal parts from cluttered bins using tactile sensing and in-hand vision.

Figure says Helix-02 can additionally support multi-robot collaboration. In another demonstration, two humanoid robots reset a bedroom in under two minutes by hanging clothes, making a bed, taking out trash, closing books, repositioning furniture, and coordinating around shared objects without a central controller.

Factory shift expansion

The latest eight-hour shift claim also aligns with Figure AI’s earlier manufacturing deployments with BMW last year.

“Weight: 70 kilogrammes. Height: approx. 170 cm. Load capacity: 20 kilogrammes – the Figure 02 is the latest humanoid robot from the California-based company Figure and is currently being tested successfully at BMW Group Plant Spartanburg in South Carolina, US, in a real production environment.”

The company also previously said its humanoid robots completed 10-hour shifts at BMW facilities, contributing to the movement of more than 90,000 parts and supporting production tied to over 30,000 BMW vehicles.

The company argues that future humanoid robots will need to operate in shared human spaces such as factories, warehouses, and homes, where they must react to people, objects, and other robots in real time.

The latest demonstrations place Figure AI in direct competition with companies including Tesla, Agility Robotics, and Apptronik, all racing to commercialize general-purpose humanoid robots for industrial work.