What is Helix, the brain of Figure's robots?

The detail that says the most about where robotics is heading sits inside Helix 02: the balance and gait controller, for decades the pride of hand-written engineering, is now a network that learned from more than a thousand hours of human motion and corrects a thousand times per second. The team building it is led by Corey Lynch, Figure's head of AI, and the strategic bet is total: Figure buys the brain from nobody, it trains it on real factory and logistics work, while rivals like Boston Dynamics chose to partner with an AI lab.

What exactly a vision-language-action model is and why the whole industry is converging on that architecture is in its sibling atom. The robot that carries it, with its BMW-verified record, in the Figure 03 profile; and the livestreamed endurance test that made it famous, in the story of the skeptic who asked for eight hours.