---
title: "Figure Sends Its Retired Humanoid Robots Leaping Into a Vat of Molten Steel"
description: "The company says just one foundry, in Imatra, Finland, would accept robots carrying lithium-ion batteries"
author: "rews desk"
published: 2026-10-03T19:31:13Z
modified: 2026-10-03T20:57:48Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/figure-sends-its-retired-humanoid-robots-leaping-into-a-vat--561ecb
language: en
tags: ["robots", "ai", "automation", "figure", "tesla", "tech"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# Figure Sends Its Retired Humanoid Robots Leaping Into a Vat of Molten Steel

*The company says just one foundry, in Imatra, Finland, would accept robots carrying lithium-ion batteries*

By rews desk · October 3, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/figure-sends-its-retired-humanoid-robots-leaping-into-a-vat--561ecb

## In brief

- Figure decommissioned its F.02 humanoids by having them leap autonomously into molten steel at a foundry in Imatra, Finland
- The company said foundries in the US and Mexico refused robots carrying lithium-ion batteries; only the Finnish foundry agreed
- The robots trained with motion capture from stunt performers and practice jumps off a second floor in San Jose, California
- A 75-ton electric arc furnace did the melting; cameras failed in the heat and electromagnetic fields, but the robots did not
- The recovered metal was shipped back to the US to be machined into a limited run of commemorative artifacts for sale

Figure has decommissioned its second-generation F.02 humanoid robots this week by programming them to leap, on their own, into a vat of molten steel at a foundry in Imatra, Finland.

The stunt solved two problems at once. Retiring a robot full of proprietary technology means keeping valuable raw material out of the scrap heap while making sure no one else can pick through the hardware. Finding someone willing to do the melting was the hard part. “None of the metal foundries we contacted in the US and Mexico would let us jump a robot with lithium-ion batteries into their expensive equipment,” the company said in a statement. “We even reached out to former MythBusters to help with the search. In the end, the only place in the world we could find willing to take this on was a foundry in Imatra, Finland.”

Then the robots had to learn to jump. Figure set up large airbags on its corporate campus in San Jose, California, and trained the F.02s to leap off the second floor of one of its buildings. The team used motion capture from stunt performers as a reference to build a new AI model in simulation, teaching the machines to jump accurately into a bucket of molten steel at a foundry they had never visited.

At the foundry, three massive graphite electrodes powered a 75-ton electric arc furnace built to melt solid steel scrap. The heat and the electromagnetic fields knocked out camera equipment and other electronics nearby. The robots kept running their programs.

The theatrical send-off traces to Arnold Schwarzenegger, who suggested the molten-steel ending, in the spirit of *Terminator 2*, in a post on X, [according to Interesting Engineering](https://interestingengineering.com/videos/figure-listens-to-arnold-melts-f-02-terminator-style). Figure took Mr. Schwarzenegger at his word.

What came out of the furnace did not go to waste. “After the F.02 melt in Finland, we sent the resulting metal bars back to the US with a new purpose,” the company said. “That metal is now being machined into a limited series of artifacts commemorating F.02.” Only a small number will be made, and they will be sold.