- AI/robotics developer Figure shot video of its humanoid robots jumping into a vat of molten steel.
- Arnold Schwarzenegger suggested how to decommission the robots came in a social media post.
- Figure trained the units for their self-destruction using footage from stunt performers.
When it came time to retire its Figure 02 humanoid robots on the cusp of a new design coming online, Figure founder and CEO Brett Adcock decided to reach out to internet denizens for inspiration.
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The Figure 02 had found success in pilot deployment on the floors of a BMW plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina, where the units accumulated over 1,200 hours of run time while assisting in the manufacture of some 30,000 BMW X3 SUV’s, Figure reported.
The AI/robotics company said facing the challenge of decommissioning a fleet of robots full of custom-built actuators and other intellectual property was going to be “no easy task.”
How the original ‘Terminator’ got involved
In a surprise response posted on X, the actor behind perhaps the most famous fictional humanoid robot of all time, Arnold Schwarzenegger, had a one-line suggestion for how to discard the out-of-date design while ensuring that no competitor would ever get a hold of the high-tech, proprietary hardware — “You should melt them,” Schwarzenegger wrote.
‼️ https://t.co/Khcp3kQiWw
— Brett Adcock (@adcock_brett) August 19, 2026
Figure said it followed up with Schwarzenegger on the suggestion and found out the actor and former California governor, who famously played an ultra-advanced robot from the future in the “Terminator” film series, was interested in participating with the decommissioning effort. And on that news, the company “put everything in motion” to make it happen.
Turning movie magic into reality
Turns out, however, that finding a convenient vat of molten metal to pitch robots into was more of a challenge than Figure was expecting, particularly since the Figure 02’s onboard battery packs are explosive when exposed to extreme heat.
None of the metal foundries Figure contacted in the U.S. and Mexico would let them dump a robot with lithium-ion batteries into their expensive equipment, according to the company. But a global search effort eventually identified a foundry in Imatra, Finland, that was game to participate.
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In preparation for the foundry disposal, Figure moved the obsolete 02 robots back to its San Jose campus for a training regimen that included teaching units to make a two-story leap into a targeted area. The company said it used movement tracking from stunt artists as a reference to train a new AI model in a simulation that would let the robots jump accurately into a bucket of molten steel, at a foundry it had never seen.
Here’s how it all turned out, including a cameo from the Terminator himself:
Figure said their disposal team had just 24 hours and six melts to get it right, and each melt had only a 20-minute window before the molten steel cooled and formed a hard crust. Despite the extreme heat and electromagnetic fields, the robots ran their AI policies seamlessly, according to the company, even as camera equipment and other electronics failed in that environment.
After the decommissioning event, Figure said it had the resulting metal bars shipped back to the U.S. and used a portion of the material to create a “limited series of artifacts” to commemorate the 02 model, of which only a few remain, stored in the company’s archives.
In a June announcement, BMW said it was preparing to deploy the upgraded Figure 03 humanoid robots at its Spartanburg facility.
“Plant Spartanburg is the birthplace of humanoid robotics in BMW Manufacturing’s operational day-to-day activities,” said Ulrich Wieland, vice president of production control and logistics, BMW Manufacturing, in a press release. “Having already successfully completed a pilot with Figure 02 in our body shop, we are now looking forward to deploying Figure 03 for a sequencing use case in logistics.”