Figure melted its first fleet of F.02 robots in a furnace in Finland

Figure said goodbye to its first fleet of F.02 humanoids. The company sent the robots that had gone out of service to an electric arc furnace at a foundry in Imatra, Finland, where the machines jumped into the melt themselves. On September 30, 2026, company co-founder Brett Adcock published footage of the operation and separately stressed that this was not a digital staging: the robots were physically brought to Finland. The 75-ton furnace melted them down into metal.

The occasion was the release of the new F.03 generation, unveiled in October 2025. Keeping the previous fleet in service no longer made sense, and manually disassembling each machine took engineering time needed for the next robot, F.04. There was a second reason too: ordinary disposal would have opened up custom components and revealed the company's intellectual property.

Finding a site turned out to be difficult. Plants in the US and Mexico refused to accept the robots because of the lithium batteries inside, and in its search Figure turned for help to former MythBusters participants. Arnold Schwarzenegger prompted the melting, and later he joined the project.

How the robots were taught to jump

At the headquarters in San Jose, large inflatable mattresses were set up and the F.02s were taught to jump from the second floor; stunt performers helped rehearse the movements. The control model was built in simulation: it had to bring each robot to the precise landing zone at an unfamiliar plant that the team had not tested before shipping.

The operation itself was allotted six melt cycles over 24 hours, about 20 minutes each, until the melt began to be covered with a hard crust. Electromagnetic fields and heat broke the equipment around the furnace: cameras and electronics failed. According to Figure, the robots kept performing their learned movements throughout.

The metal from the melt was sent back to the US. They plan to make a limited series of commemorative items containing F.02 material from it. Most of the fleet has already been destroyed, and several machines remain in storage at the headquarters. The company also calls the project a demonstration of autonomous robot control in extreme conditions.

Image: Cyberbotics, Olivier Michel, Fabien Rohrer, Nicolas Heiniger, wikibooks contributors. CC BY-SA 3.0 · License

Translation editor: Салтанов А.