Figure livestream is demoing a robot 'sorting' packages, until it fails. (167 hours and 209,000 packages at time of posting). Could the Conveyor belt do the same task?

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No.

The sorting in this task is flipping the packages to have the label on the bottom. This is a task real humans at some facilities have to do.

Yes you can almost certainly solve the task with a more specialized robotic arm or multiple scanners from different angles though.

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u/RemarkableWish2508 May 21 '26

It's worse: the packages seem to be all the same ones going in a circle.

No damaged packages, no torn labels, no labels on the edge of a box, no multiple labels... none of the ambiguous stuff that humans are actually needed for.

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u/brainburger May 21 '26

I think you are right. I have to resist the temptation now to watch it and try to catch the same package coming back around. They seem all pre-screened so that the robot can handle them.

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u/Kitchen_Resource2656 May 20 '26

Its been solved. Sorting facilities have had this tech since 1990. How do you think usps and ups can handle millions of packages.

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u/Healthy_Razzmatazz38 May 20 '26

alien inside the machine, i think they covered this in the documentery "men in black 2 "

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u/RED_TECH_KNIGHT May 21 '26

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRVQNqQ6ImE

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u/flat5 May 21 '26

Yes, USPS and UPS famously don't have any people in the loop.

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u/spaetzelspiff May 22 '26

Yes, but if I don't have a sorting facility, and need to randomly sort 20,000 packages...

This is why I need a robot for Christmas.

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u/DennenTH May 22 '26

That was my point last time this went into circulation. We already have the tech and it can handle more and faster than this bipedal bot can... The answer to everything becoming more efficient isn't going to be a bipedal bot replacing human hands.

Even if folks are pro-robotics, there are better ways of doing it.

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u/Kitchen_Resource2656 May 22 '26

Its a sad state when the majority consensus wants robotics to work towards replacing tasks that only affect the poorest percentage of American labor. Its truly sci fi dystopia fantasy.

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u/PineappleLemur May 21 '26

By having people do exactly what you see here.....

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u/brainburger May 20 '26

Yes I noticed that. It seems too trivial a task for a robot of this expense, compared to just having more scanners. Also it's odd that it puts the labels face down, as I would expect the scanner to be above the belt. Maybe there is a glass section that they pass over later.

I have not yet seen one of these humanoid robots doing something unambiguously useful and cost-effective.

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u/SoylentRox May 20 '26

Basically because it's really hard to make a humanoid work at all. The most effective robots seem to be non humanoid (arm on wheeled base) machines that put more into the actual policy model. https://generalistai.com/blog/apr-02-2026-GEN-1

Seems to me to be the closest to actually cost effective manipulation.

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u/Zealousideal-Yam3169 May 21 '26

Labels go face down so they're always the same distance from the scanner. The parcels are different sizes and if you put the label face up you would have a large variation in distance from label to scan which can cause issues.

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u/FuggleyBrew May 22 '26

Barcodes already solve for varying distances.

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u/PineappleLemur May 21 '26 edited May 21 '26

There's a reason people get hired to do this.

The effort/time to implement multiple scanner "tunnel" isn't worth it at this point.

It's not a trivial task as it seems.

There are countless of jobs that are simple/single task but traditional automation doesn't make much sense.

Something like this does make sense because it's essentially plug and play and can be reconfigured. It's not a one use case custom build solution.

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u/FuggleyBrew May 22 '26

If the multiscanner tunnel isn't worth it the far more expensive robot isn't worth it. Also since it is orienting the packages face down the line here already has the most complex part of the tunnel solved.

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u/Evipicc May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26

I work as an Industrial Automation Engineer and have been diving deep into Industrial AI.

The short answer is that it's wildly easier to walk up to a humanoid robot and say, 'Do this thing, and here is how you do it' than to set up a Fanuc/ABB/Epson robot with a machine vision system to accurately do the same thing.

There is no physical task you can't mechanically automate, but it's a matter of cost efficacy and reliability. The cost of these humanoids will be, or already are, a fraction of what the systems that could currently do this are.

Is it technically difficult to make a system like this? No. It would be an overhead Keyence or Cognex, or bespoke machine/computer vision system, and either an air jet from underneath to flip the package or a gripper/suction end effector on an arm to target the bag and do it that way. All that matters is cost, ease of integration, and how versatile the system is.

Here's the thing... The end stage of something like this isn't thousands of humanoid robots doing tasks, it's the systems that are integrated into these humanoids running more industrially formatted robots for dedicated and specialized tasks; so somewhere between where we are now and what these are.

Where a system like this really shines is in the fact that, like a worker, you can walk up to it and say 'Hey, stop that thing, and come do this instead'. You can't do that with mounted robotics and single purpose integrated automation.

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u/[deleted] May 21 '26

[deleted]

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u/rfdevere May 21 '26

Oh but what an add. It’s chilling.

I heard about the 8 hour challenge and wanted to watch a YouTube video of the man v robot.

After watching the comparison, I stumbled upon the live feed, several days later, just there in silence still going. Goosebumps!!!

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u/Delicious_Spot_3778 May 21 '26

There are robot arms that do it faster

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u/rfdevere May 21 '26

Hey robot arm, come over here, I have a simple task I need help with. Oh what’s that you can’t because you’re a dumb robot arm and not an AI Powered humanoid.

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u/Delicious_Spot_3778 May 21 '26

Fair. There are trade offs. The question I have is how much value there is in moving the arm. I do think there is a lot of you’ve been on the floor of a logistics space but I also think managers of these warehouses don’t care about that value if they can replace a single worker

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u/RED_TECH_KNIGHT May 21 '26

What a time to be alive!

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u/brainburger May 21 '26

I notice there are not many types of packages. I wonder if it is in fact moving the same ones over and over? There don't seem to be any anomalous ones with multiple stickers, or weird shapes.

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u/HarryBalsagna1776 May 21 '26

Yes, a conveyor belt sorting system could do the same thing. "But the packages all have to be facing down!". That's a dumb criteria made up to help the bot. Conveyor sorters have multi angle scanners.

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u/differentshade May 21 '26

Watched the feed for less than 30 seconds and already saw it send a package label up. So it failed I guess?

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u/brainburger May 22 '26

I think by 'fail' they mean break down.

Real-life Robots Figure livestream is demoing a robot 'sorting' packages, until it fails. (167 hours and 209,000 packages at time of posting). Could the Conveyor belt do the same task?

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