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Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

(www.figure.ai)
392 points lairv | 2 comments | 09 Oct 25 13:27 UTC | HN request time: 0.404s | source
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websiteapi ◴[09 Oct 25 14:17 UTC] No.45528053[source]▶
I don't understand why this even has to charge at all. It makes sense for multiple reasons to give it 3 batteries that say have 1/3 of the capacity, and make at least 1, if not 2 or 3 capable of charging independently on a station.

Then the robot would just go to its station and swap its own batteries. Why even have wireless charging at all? Or even a cable? Or even have it "charge"? Battery swapping seems to make way more sense here. Am I missing something?

Bonus points if the robot has data on the degradation and can order its own replacement batteries, take them out of the box, and ship the old ones to a recycling facility...

More bonus points if the charging station is actually outside under a 1KW solar array pergola thing, that way you don't even have to pay for the electricity either. Don't worry, the robot will lock the door when it goes out to grab its batteries. It'll also bring in the whole setup if the weather isn't great.

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4b11b4 ◴[09 Oct 25 14:20 UTC] No.45528084[source]▶
Swapping requires a lot more moving parts and an additional enclosure to house the battery, and the batteries need to be much more rugged, and now you need two of them.

But a cable is a fair question.. you'd think it could plug itself in...

Maybe that's a hint at the robots actual capabilities at this point... or, they didn't want to bet on the unpredictability of environments: what if there's something in the way of the cable, though something could also be in the way of the inductive charger

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pants2 ◴[09 Oct 25 14:26 UTC] No.45528173[source]▶
I believe Elon has said before re:Tesla factory that plugging in cords is one of the hardest things to automate.
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1. 4b11b4 ◴[09 Oct 25 17:51 UTC] No.45530872[source]▶
Yeah, immediately after I wrote that I thought now you need a rugged socket, and to mount the cable somewhere on a wall.. and where to even place it on the body that it's easy for it to plug in.. the belly button?

There is empty space in the feet anyway for a coil and a wire..

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2. xp84 ◴[10 Oct 25 05:20 UTC] No.45535568[source]▶
Forget sockets. My $15 fitness band uses a magnetically-assisted pogo-pin type thing. Works great. Just blow that up to 5x to get nice fat conductors. All you need to do is get it close and it plugs itself in. Knock it off perpendicularly to disconnect.