Curiosity · AI Model

Figure Helix (Figure 02)

Helix is Figure AI's generalist brain for the Figure 02 humanoid robot. It uses a dual-system architecture: System 2 is a 7B-class vision-language model that reasons at ~7–9 Hz about scene, goals, and language; System 1 is an 80M-parameter transformer policy that takes S2's latent as a conditioning vector and outputs 200 Hz whole-upper-body control (arms, torso, head, fingers). One network controls two robots collaboratively, zero-shot picks up household items it has never seen, and follows free-form natural-language commands — a milestone demo for commercial humanoids.

Model specs

Vendor
Figure AI
Family
Helix
Released
2025-02
Context window
1 tokens
Modalities
text, vision, code

Strengths

  • Dual-system decouples slow reasoning from high-rate control
  • 200 Hz fine-grained finger control — not just pick-and-place
  • Single network generalises across multiple robots and tasks
  • Proven on commercial-grade humanoid hardware

Limitations

  • Proprietary — not released publicly, no weights or API
  • Limited independent third-party evaluation
  • Tied tightly to the Figure 02 hardware platform
  • Requires Figure-scale data collection pipeline to replicate

Use cases

  • Humanoid manipulation in domestic and warehouse settings
  • Collaborative dual-robot tasks from shared instruction
  • Voice-driven household chores
  • Whole-upper-body coordinated control research

Benchmarks

BenchmarkScoreAs of
Zero-shot household-object grasping (Figure demo)qualitative success on thousands of novel items2025-02
Multi-robot collaborative task (two Figure 02)first public demo2025-02

Frequently asked questions

What is Helix?

Helix is Figure AI's generalist vision-language-action model that runs on the Figure 02 humanoid. It combines a slow VLM planner with a fast 200 Hz visuomotor policy for whole-upper-body control.

Is Helix available to developers?

No — Helix is proprietary to Figure AI and currently deployed only on its own humanoid hardware.

How does Helix compare to π0 and RT-2?

Helix targets full humanoid upper-body control at 200 Hz and dual-robot collaboration, whereas π0 focuses on dexterous manipulation across varied embodiments and RT-2 emphasises semantic generalisation from web-scale co-training.

Sources

  1. Figure AI — Introducing Helix — accessed 2026-04-20
  2. IEEE Spectrum — Figure 02 Helix coverage — accessed 2026-04-20