The robotics startup Figure AI has big plans for its humanoid robots, driven by proprietary AI helixof which it plans to manufacture 12,000 a year and reach 100,000 in the first four. Figure 02a general-purpose humanoid oriented toward physical jobs and with a force equivalent to humanwill not have a commercial outlet. Yes, the new model will reach the consumer market Figure 03a little shorter (1.68 m) and lighter (61 kilos) than its predecessor and designed to do housework like cleaning rooms, putting the dishwasher on or folding clothes.
But these robots have risks, according to a lawsuit filed by a former worker fired after alert company leaders that robots are ‘powerful enough to fracture a human skull’according to Futurism.
The plaintiff is Robert Gruendelsenior robotics safety engineer, who filed the lawsuit last Friday in federal court in the Northern District of California. Gruendel’s lawyers allege that his ‘wrongful dismissal’ occurred in September, just days after he raised his concerns with management. ‘more direct and documented safety complaints’.
The lawsuit comes just two months after Figure reached a valuation of $39 billion (about 33.6 billion euros) in a financing round led by Parkway Venture Capital. It means multiplying by 15 the value it had at the beginning of 2024, when the company closed another round with investors such as Jeff Bezos, Nvidia and Microsoft.
Potentially lethal capabilities
In the lawsuit, Gruendel’s lawyers maintain that the engineer alerted Figure’s CEO, Brett Adcockand to the chief engineer, Kyle Edelbergabout the robot’s potentially lethal capabilities and that a Figure 02 almost hit an employee when it suffered a malfunction and left ‘a gap of about 6 millimeters in the steel door of a refrigerator’ from the office it hit.
Although Figure 02 is not going to be commercialized, it has completed an 11-month deployment in a manufacturing factory. bmw in the United States, where he has worked on an assembly line and contributed to the production of more than 30,000 cars, according to the automaker. After presenting the 03, the company announced that it is removing Figure 02 and using what we learned in the new model.
Gruendel made a impact test with 02 which led him to conclude that it could cause serious damage. During the tests, the robot moved at ‘superhuman speed’generating impacts that, according to measurements, were twenty times higher than the pain threshold. Gruendel also estimated that the force generated by Figure 02 was ‘approximately twice that needed to fracture an adult human skull’.
According to the document, the company presented a ‘security roadmap’ to two potential investors who ended up financing the company. Gruendel warned Figure AI’s leadership not to ‘lower’ it because feared that the ‘product security plan that contributed to their decision to invest’ had been ‘dismantled’ after closing the financing round, an action that ‘could be interpreted as fraudulent.’
However, the plaintiff’s concerns were ‘treated as obstacles, not obligations’ and the company alleged a ‘vague change in business direction’ as a pretext for his dismissal, according to the text presented to the court. Gruendel seeks economic, compensatory and punitive damages and requests a jury trial.
The company’s version is different. A spokesman has assured that Gruendel was ‘fired for poor performance’ and that their ‘allegations are falsehoods that Figure will completely debunk in court’.