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Figure AI says it retired most of its F.02 humanoid fleet by having trained robots jump into molten steel at a foundry in Imatra, Finland. The company says the dramatic disposal protected proprietary hardware and avoided the staff time required to dismantle a generation it no longer considered practical to maintain as its F.03 fleet grew.

Why did Figure retire the F.02 robots this way?

Figure says the F.02 robots had been part of important early milestones, including its first BMW deployment, the launch of Helix, its first household-chore robot and its first logistics deployment. But as the F.03 fleet expanded, maintaining the older robots stopped making sense to the company.

These were not ordinary machines that could simply be sent through a routine teardown. Figure says the F.02 units contained custom-built actuators and other proprietary technology. The company argued that dismantling the fleet would consume staff time it wanted to put toward F.04, delaying work on the next generation. Its announcement put the challenge this way: “Decommissioning a fleet of robots full of custom-built actuators and other intellectual property is no easy task.”

Figure’s account of the decision and the event is in its September 30, 2026 announcement.

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How were the robots prepared for the foundry?

Figure says it began at its San Jose campus, where it set up large airbags and trained robots to jump from a building’s second floor. The company then trained a new AI model in simulation, using stunt-artist movements as a reference, to guide jumps toward the steel bucket.

Figure describes the jumps as autonomous. That is the company’s characterization of its trained robots; the public accounts reviewed do not provide an independent technical audit confirming every detail of the promotional footage or the autonomy claim.

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Where did the melting happen, and what were the reported conditions?

Figure says foundries it contacted in the United States and Mexico would not accept robots containing lithium-ion batteries in their equipment. It found a willing facility in Imatra, Finland.

According to Figure, the operation used a 75-ton electric-arc furnace and involved six melts over 24 hours. Each melt offered a 20-minute window before the molten steel cooled and formed a hard crust. These are figures reported by Figure, not independently measured results.

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The company says the robots’ AI policies continued to run despite extreme heat and electromagnetic fields, while camera equipment and other electronics failed. Those operational details, too, are Figure’s account.

Is the stunt based on Terminator 2: Judgment Day?

Yes. The molten-steel scene deliberately references Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Figure says Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed melting the robots and participated in the production. Futurism also framed the stunt around the film reference in its October 2, 2026 report.

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  • AI Large Model ChatGPT Integration for Enhanced User-Machine Interaction. TonyPi incorporates a multimodal model, with ChatGPT at the core of its interaction system. With AI vision and voice integration, TonyPi excels in perception, reasoning, and action, enabling advanced embodied AI applications and delivering a seamless, intuitive human-machine interaction experience!
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  • AI Vision Recognition and Tracking. TonyPi's 2DOF head is fitted with an HD camera that provides a wide field of view. It supports a range of AI vision capabilities, including color recognition, target tracking, ball kicking, line following, and MediaPipe-based motion control for interactive AI applications.
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Are all of Figure’s F.02 robots gone?

Figure says most of the fleet has been decommissioned, but a few units remain stored at the company’s headquarters. It also says recovered metal is being machined into a limited series of commemorative F.02 artifacts; the announcement links to the company’s offer, but availability may change.

What the public footage does—and does not—establish

Figure says it trained the robots to jump, transported them to Finland and had them leap into molten steel. The account and promotional video make the company’s intended sequence clear, but neither source amounts to an independent technical verification of how the jumps were controlled or every operating condition described. Futurism reports the promotional video runs nearly four minutes; that duration describes the video, not independent evidence of the underlying performance.

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