Robotics Special: Figure decommissions the F.02 in bizarre fashion

Welcome back, Superhuman. Figure had an awkward problem: how do you retire a fleet of humanoid robots while making sure that the proprietary hardware doesn’t end up in the wrong hands? Arnold Schwarzenegger had a suggestion, which somehow ended with robots tossing themselves into a massive furnace of hot molten steel in Finland.

1. Your DoorDash order may soon arrive by drone: The company just nabbed an FAA Part 135 air carrier certification, clearing it to run its own drone delivery fleet, DoorDash Air, on top of its existing marketplace. The company says drones will mainly take over mid-distance orders (3 to 5 miles) that normally slow down Dashers, while human drivers keep handling shorter, trickier deliveries. DoorDash says drones averaged 25-minute deliveries in 2025. You can see the breakthrough in action here. (1.4M views)

2. Figure retires its F.02 robots in peak Terminator fashion, goes viral: With its F.03 fleet expanding, Figure needed to destroy older F.02 units without exposing proprietary hardware and avoiding a slow manual teardown. Following a suggestion from Arnold Schwarzenegger, the company trained the robots to autonomously leap into a 75-ton vat of molten steel at a Finnish foundry. The bizarre video has blown up on social media, racking up over 1.8M views.

3. Robots can already perform 74% of physical tasks — but there’s a catch: A new report by Anthropic estimates existing robots can handle work representing 34% of US working hours, mostly in controlled environments. Driving and warehouse jobs face the greatest exposure, while nursing and repair remain comparatively protected. The bigger obstacle is economics: robots are currently cheaper than humans for just 0.3% of tasks, and that figure may take 40 years to reach 10%. Read the full report here.

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🤝 Diplomacy GPT: At a Chinese Embassy reception in Riyadh, two Chinese-made robots wearing traditional attire performed the Najdi Ardah, a UNESCO-recognized ceremonial sword dance, before senior Saudi and Chinese officials. By placing Chinese robotics inside a familiar Saudi tradition, the embassy turned humanoid engineering into a carefully choreographed piece of cultural diplomacy. See the viral performance here.

🌊 Wash Job: In an hour-long, reportedly uncut demo, Dyna Robotics’ Taku robot loaded and started laundry machines, emptied dryers, folded towels, sorted stacks by size, and stocked shelves — all without human assistance. By mastering the whole workflow rather than one chore, Dyna hopes to make robots economical for hotels and laundromats. See Taku in action here.

🧹 Operation Cleanup: In a futuristic bit of housekeeping, a drone was filmed pressure-washing the glass façade of SpaceX’s Starbase launch-control building two days before Flight 14. The drone hovered beside the multi-story structure, spraying water and clearing sightlines for teams monitoring the launch. Flight 14 later became Starship’s first mission to sustain orbit and deploy operational satellites. Watch the viral clip here. (2.5M views)

Here are the biggest developments in the robotics space that you should know about:

A movement is forming around Open Intelligence: AI should be open, portable, and under your control.

Here’s what you’ll explore:

With speakers like Linden Li (Applied Compute), Lucas Atkins (Arcee), and Robert Brennan (OpenHands). Oct 13, at The Midway, San Francisco. 

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You can now sear a "restaurant-quality steak" with the push of a button.

Agari just dropped the AI Smart Cooker, a countertop robot that rolls a sous vide chef and grill master into one machine. It scans your food using AI, cooks under pressure in one-third the time, giving users a perfect steak sear in under 60 seconds. You can see it in action here.

You can check it out here.

“Lending a hand” will never mean what it used to.

Engineers at ETH Zurich took an off-the-shelf robotic hand, added a battery, onboard computer, and sensors, then used reinforcement learning to teach it to balance and walk on its fingertips, Addams Family-style. It can cross surfaces like tile, grass, and stone, and even play a keyboard-controlled computer game while staying upright.

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Zain, Faiq, and the Superhuman AI team