A humanoid robot cleaning a table is fun to watch. But how do you get a machine to that point? On a tour of Figure, Sourcery visits the places where it happens: from a recreated living room to production lines where heads, arms and batteries come together. It is a fascinating look behind the polished demonstration videos.
Molly O’Shea walks around the robot campus in San Jose with founder Brett Adcock. The tour, filmed in May 2026, focuses on Figure 03, the company’s third generation. Figure wants to build one type of robot that can learn different jobs, in factories and at home. The visit shows how much technology lies between that idea and a useful robot.
A living room as a training ground
In the test living room, a white robot bends over the coffee table. It uses a cloth and a spray bottle while O’Shea and Adcock stand beside it. An ordinary household task demands a surprising amount from a robot: seeing where objects are, moving between them, grasping something and staying balanced.
Figure uses Helix, its own AI that turns observations into actions. In the living-room trials, the system has to handle a cloth that changes shape and find a free hand for the next movement. The challenge is not one impressive grasp, but a whole sequence of actions that fit together.
Robot heads sit on a rack here
Further along, the setting changes from living room to workshop. At BotQ, Figure’s manufacturing facility, the various parts are assembled and checked. A rack of robot heads makes a humanoid tangible: sensors, electronics, motors and mechanical parts that have to work together flawlessly.
Adcock shows that software and camera calibration are involved before a head is even attached to a robot. The battery has its own production line too. These are essential steps towards having two robots perform the same job, even if they are less spectacular on camera.
Test first, then get to work
An assembled robot is not yet a finished product. Figure describes more than eighty functional checks per robot, followed by endurance tests with repeated body movements. The company aims to find loose connections and components that fail early before deploying a machine.
That is what makes this tour appealing. It shows not only what the robot can already do, but also the work needed to make it reliable. Wiping a table once is a start. Getting that same robot to do it day after day in changing conditions is what Figure’s people are working towards.
