Humanoid Helper: Voice‑Activated Robot Takes Charge of Your Home
New Robot Brain Powered by “Helix”
Figure CEO Brett Adcock dropped a surprise in the tech scene: a fresh, machine‑learning brain designed for humanoids. The launch came right after the company decided to part ways with OpenAI—a move that has the industry talking.
What’s “Helix” All About?
Think of it as a Vision‑Language‑Action (VLA) model—yes, that fancy term that’s already shaking up robotics. It’s like a brain that sees, listens, and does with just a sentence.
- Seeing – It grabs visual data from cameras.
- Listening – It reads natural language prompts.
- Acting – It moves a robot in real time.
Its sibling in the field is Google DeepMind’s RT‑2, which trains robots by mixing video footage with big language models. Helix follows the same playbook but takes it a notch higher.
Why Helix Stands Out
Figure claims that Helix can pick up any household item—including ones you’ve never seen before. It can tackle objects of different shapes, sizes, colors, and even strange materials, all just by humming a natural‑language request.
This “generalist” capability means the robot doesn’t get tripped up by a brand‑new object. Instead, it can adapt on the fly, thanks to its combo of visual perception and language understanding.
What Makes This Thing “Generalist”?
- Rapid learning – Trained on thousands of examples.
- Rich sensory data – Eyes meet ears, all the time.
- Human‑like instructions – Nope, it doesn’t require engineers to speak robot‑tongue.
If you’re fan of tech that feels like it just stepped out of a sci‑fi movie, this is the next best thing.
Helix Turns Your Speech into Robot Actions—No Science‑Fiction Needed
Imagine you’re at home, coffee in hand, and you can just say “Hey Helix, give that bag of cookies to the robot on your right.” In a perfect world, the robot would comply instantly. That’s the promise Helix is trying to deliver.
What’s the Big Deal?
Helix is a platform that fuses vision and language processing, so a robot can actually understand and react to what you say. After grabbing your voice command, it checks its surroundings with a camera, figures out where the cookie jar is, and moves out of the way—literally.
Two Robots, One Mission
- “Hand me the cookie bag.” — Robot A passes it to Robot B.
- “Drop the cookie bag on the open drawer.” — Robot B delivers it with a flourish.
Helix loves teamwork. The platform can juggle two robots at once, handing each other tasks so they finish chores faster than a human could.
Helix’s Home‑Robot Dream
Most labs love tidy warehouses, but a house is one big puzzle. No neatly arranged shelves, no straight aisles—just clutter, couch cushions, and a cat that decides to stroll onto a power outlet. Helix is tackling this head‑on, because it understands the chaos. That’s why a figure of two little humanoid robots in a living room feels like a scene from a friendly sci‑fi sitcom.
Why Haven’t We All Got Robo‑Butlers Yet?
There are three dragons blocking the way:
- Teaching a machine to learn what’s in a messy room.
- Making it control itself without crashing into furniture.
- Prices that fly into the six‑figure zone.
Because of these challenges, industrial robots win the battle first, getting tricks to improve reliability and cut costs. Only after that do the folks in the hobbyist and research worlds look toward household robots. Time to bring the lake‑home robot revolution to the next millennium!
Tech and VC heavyweights join the Disrupt 2025 agenda
Netflix, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Sequoia Capital, Elad Gil — just a few of the heavy hitters joining the Disrupt 2025 agenda. They’re here to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don’t miss the 20th anniversary of TechCrunch Disrupt, and a chance to learn from the top voices in tech — grab your ticket now and save up to $600+ before prices rise.
Tech and VC heavyweights join the Disrupt 2025 agenda
Netflix, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Sequoia Capital — just a few of the heavy hitters joining the Disrupt 2025 agenda. They’re here to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don’t miss the 20th anniversary of TechCrunch Disrupt, and a chance to learn from the top voices in tech — grab your ticket now and save up to $675 before prices rise.
San Francisco Tech Scene: Figures on the Rise
While the Bay Area buzzes with gigabytes and startup dreams, Figure has shifted gears—turning its notebooks into real‑world testbeds.
Event Reminder – October 27‑29, 2025
Mark your calendars (and set your alarms) for the big splash in San Francisco. There’s an upcoming series of talks, demos, and a chance to see how one of the world’s most talked‑about humanoids is doing its thing on a living‑room stage.
Last Year’s Show‑case, Updated
- Back in 2024, when TechCrunch’s crew breezed through Figure’s Bay HQ, Adcock rolled out a sneak‑peek of the humanoid’s “home” adventures. Picture a robot humming in a kitchen, assisting with coffee, maybe making a joke over the microwave.
- The big takeaway? While the swarm of early adopters seemed eager, the company told us the house‑hold spotlight wasn’t a priority—at least, not for now.
- Currently, Figure’s focus is on workplace pilots, especially corporate collaborations like the big-gear BMW partnership.
Why the Focus Shift?
Think of Figure’s strategy as a GPS navigation: once the highway leads to corporate traffic, the built‑in sensors start routing the robot to suit machinery‑heavy environments. The Home‑setting tests were great for user experience, but the playbook says: first, make bank with factories, because that’s where the budgets are.
What’s Next for the Humanoid?
Expect next‑stop ‘industrial labs’ and ‘office corridors,’ but keep your eyes peeled. In the backdrop, there’s a rumor that the robot might soon swing into the home arena again, once the corporate runway takes off. Could this be the “home‑robot‑without‑the‑home‑prompt” moment? Time will tell.
Register now for a front‑row seat to watch [Figure’s] new chapter unfold, because this isn’t just tech—it’s a whole new robot‑culture wave.
Helix’s Bold Leap into the Household
Figure’s fresh Helix reveal isn’t just another tech buzzword—it’s a promise that the kitchen, the living room, and every corner of your home deserve a robotic sidekick that can roll up its sleeves.
Why homes are the biggest challenge
Think about the chaos of daily life: you drop a spoon, rearrange furniture, splash a puddle everywhere. Each house looks and behaves like a neon jigsaw puzzle. The goal is simple: let a robot whip up a new trick on the fly when it stumbles upon an unfamiliar object. Turning that vision into reality? Not so trivial.
Manual programming: the old, inflexible way
- It takes hours of PhD‑level wizardry.
- Or it demands thousands of live demos that even experts dread.
- Scaling this for every kitchen in the world? A recipe for disaster.
Farms of kitchens, living rooms, and bathrooms each have their own quirks—different light setups, chaotic messes, and tools you’ve never seen. Hand‑coding for each one would eat up time, money, and sanity, even for a company as well‑funded as Figure.
The training approach: hours, not hours of brilliance
Robotic arm labs show that robust performance demands endless repetition. A robot that can pick up a mug “right the first time” will have rehearsed that motion hundreds of times already. So when Helix tackles a wildly variable home environment, you’re looking at many, many training cycles behind each polished clip.
Reaching for more talent
Helix is still in its toddler phase—conceptually fragile but with massive potential. The company’s newest rollout is best viewed as a recruiting rally: they’re calling on bright engineers to join the whirlwind of progress, turn laboratory success into real‑world savvy, and essentially build the robotic roommate of your dreams.
In short: “We’re launching from a place where robots haven’t yet learned to cook a snack on demand, and we desperately need hands that can expedite that learning curve.”
So next time you spill coffee or rescue a beat‑up sock from the back of your closet, imagine Helix stepping in midway between chaos and order—each move crafted through hours of learning and a touch of human ingenuity. And if that sparks your interest, Figure might just be the team that’ll make it happen.
