Figure AI Retires F.02 Humanoid Robot with Terminator 2-Inspired Stunt

Robotics company Figure AI staged a dramatic retirement ceremony for its F.02 humanoid robot by training a custom AI model to let the robot walk into a smelting furnace. The marketing stunt was suggested by Arnold Schwarzenegger, who attended the event in Finland alongside the retiring robot. While primarily a high-profile PR campaign leveraging celebrity nostalgia, the event highlights how quickly humanoid robot hardware generations iterate from active deployment to retirement. It also underscores ongoing disposal and safety challenges regarding high-density lithium batteries in complex robotic hardware. Figure AI explicitly trained an AI model specifically for the robot to execute the dramatic walking movement into the furnace. Finding a facility willing to melt the unit was difficult, as many US and Mexican plants declined due to lithium battery explosion hazards before a furnace in Imatra, Finland accepted.