Robots doing chores around the house is something we’ve all seen in movies, but now it’s slowly becoming a reality. The latest buzz comes from California-based Figure, the company behind the Figure 02 humanoid. This robot has just shown off a skill that feels surprisingly human — loading the dishwasher.
Now, you might be thinking, “That doesn’t sound too hard.” And you’re right — for us humans, stacking dishes after dinner is pretty simple. But for a robot, this is like solving a hundred tiny puzzles at once. From gripping plates without dropping them, to fitting cups and glasses into tight racks, every move needs to be just right. And that’s exactly what makes this achievement such a big deal.
The Secret Sauce: Helix AI
The brain behind all this magic is Figure’s Helix AI model, a powerful Vision-Language-Action system. Think of it as the robot’s mind that allows it to watch, learn, and repeat tasks — just like we do. Instead of engineers writing special programs for every little job, Helix learns by seeing humans perform the task.
So when Figure 02 was asked to load dishes, it didn’t need a brand-new algorithm or task-specific tweaks. The same general-purpose model that helped it fold towels or rearrange packages was simply given new data. With that, the robot picked up plates, placed glasses, and even handled tricky dishware with finger-level precision.
Why This Is Harder Than It Looks
If you’ve ever tried squeezing one more plate into an already full dishwasher, you know it takes a bit of strategy. For a humanoid, the challenges multiply. It has to:
- Grip objects firmly enough that they don’t slip, but gently enough that they don’t shatter.
- Reorient dishes to fit in narrow racks.
- Judge centimeter-level spaces with almost no room for error.
And yet, Figure 02 managed all this. It even adapted to different loads — from heavy dinner plates to delicate wine glasses — showing off flexibility that’s rare in robotics.
Robots That Don’t Need Babysitting
What’s exciting here is how natural the whole process looks. With Helix, the humanoid can even recover gracefully if something goes wrong, like bumping a dish or misplacing an item. That means less babysitting from humans and more independence for the robot.
This is a big shift compared to older robots, which needed custom programming for every single task. Want it to fold a towel? Write a program. Want it to stack dishes? Write a different one. But with Helix, Figure is proving that a single, generalist brain can handle it all.
From Towels to Dishwashers — What’s Next?
Back in February, Figure unveiled Helix and wowed people with its ability to fold towels and move packages. Since then, the robot has kept surprising us. Dishwasher loading may not sound glamorous, but it shows how flexible the system really is.
Each skill learned adds another block in the foundation of scalable intelligence. And if you think about it, the tasks aren’t random at all. Folding, stacking, rearranging — they’re all building toward one big goal: a humanoid that can smoothly take on the everyday jobs we’d love to outsource.
A Glimpse of the Future Butler
Of course, we’re not quite at “robot butler” levels just yet. There’s still a long list of chores that Figure 02 will need to master — vacuuming the carpet, taking out the trash, maybe even dusting the shelves. But with Helix’s data-driven learning, each new challenge looks more like a stepping stone than a mountain to climb.
The dishwasher demo isn’t just a flashy stunt. It’s a peek into a future where humanoid robots can join us in the kitchen, living room, or office, helping out without us needing to code every move. And if things keep moving at this pace, maybe we’ll be arguing with our robot about who’s doing the dishes sooner than we think.
Source: Figure AI
