Just when you thought the humanoid robot hype train might be slowing for a pit stop, Figure AI, Inc. CEO Brett Adcock decided to add another log to the fire by teaching one to drive. In a characteristically casual post on X, Adcock shared a video of a Figure humanoid behind the wheel, answering the rhetorical question, “Would you ever put a humanoid in a car to drive it?”
The video shows a Figure robot, likely the Figure 01 model, calmly cruising around what appears to be a company parking lot in an electric utility vehicle. The robot manages the pedals for acceleration and braking, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves—it’s steering with a knob attached to the wheel, not with the nuanced grip of a seasoned getaway driver. This is less Grand Theft Auto and more Grand Theft Golf Cart. Still, the demonstration is another notch in the company’s rapidly growing belt of accomplishments, which includes a partnership with BMW for factory work.
Why is this important?
While teaching a robot to drive a glorified golf cart might seem trivial in an age of sophisticated autonomous vehicles, the demonstration is a potent symbol of progress in general-purpose robotics. The goal here isn’t to build a better car, but to build a robot that can operate the tools and machines in a world designed for humans—and a vehicle is just a very complex, mobile tool. This ability to interact with our infrastructure, from coffee machines to cars, is the holy grail for humanoids. Figure is signaling that its AI models are becoming increasingly capable of tackling the dynamic, unstructured tasks that define the real world, moving one step closer to the “billion-unit level” of deployment Adcock envisions.