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In a post on X last week, Figure AI CEO Brett Adcock said the contest required visualization specialist intern Aime Gerard and humanoid robot Bob the Bot to sort as many packages as possible within 10 hours.
The challenge followed California labor laws, meaning Gerard was given paid breaks and time to eat during the event. Adcock said the robot operated fully autonomously and was not remotely controlled by another human.
Gerard led for most of the contest, though the robot briefly moved ahead after he stepped away for a bathroom break around the halfway point. By the end of the challenge, he had sorted 12,924 packages, 192 more than the humanoid robot. He averaged 2.79 seconds per package, while the robot averaged 2.83 seconds.
Adcock later joked on X that Gerard’s "left forearm is basically broken" and that his fingers were covered in blisters after the contest. "This is the last time a human will ever win," Adcock wrote.
FigureAI's intern in a package sorting contest with the company humanoid robot. Video courtesy of FigureAI
The livestream sparked debate online. One viewer wrote that the demonstration proved the robot was capable of doing "actual work," according to British news outlet Metro. Another commenter argued the humanoid still performed poorly, claiming it dropped four times more packages, struggled to flip square boxes and damaged more labels than the human worker. A separate user described the narrow loss as "a moral victory for the robots" and predicted humans would soon fall behind.
Figure AI has also been livestreaming multiple humanoid robots sorting packages continuously at its headquarters since last Wednesday. The company aims to show potential customers that the robots can operate reliably for long periods, including 24-hour shifts, investor and board member Jesse Coors-Blankenship told Business Insider last week.
Adcock said the livestream would continue until the robots fail.
Ayanna Howard, dean of the College of Engineering at Ohio State University, said the robots’ ability to work for long periods without failure was impressive, but added that the technology was not ready for large-scale deployment because of accuracy problems.
Howard cited issues including packages being placed barcode-side up and boxes being knocked off conveyor belts. "We're a long way away from a fully autonomous humanoid in a logistics center."
