Real footage: Arnold Schwarzenegger sends robots into a furnace

The F.02 has now reached the end of the road at Figure. The new F.03 fleet is growing, and according to the manufacturer, it is no longer worthwhile to maintain the older generation alongside it. So what do you do with the retired robots? Simply scrapping them was out of the question. After all, the machines contain custom-developed actuators, proprietary hardware and other intellectual property. Dismantling them wasn't an option either. According to Figure, doing so would require so much work that it would delay development of the upcoming F.04.

The solution is as simple as it is dramatic: melt them down. As Figure explains on its own blog, the idea came from none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger after Figure asked online for suggestions on how to bid farewell to the F.02. The actor was even brought in for the resulting video: Wearing full protective gear, Schwarzenegger leads a robot to the furnace. At the end of the 3:40-minute video, he removes his face shield and says, “Figure 2 has been decommissioned.”

Finding a suitable furnace wasn't easy, however. According to Figure, facilities in the US and Mexico turned the company down, partly because of the lithium-ion batteries inside the robots. Figure eventually found what it needed in Imatra, Finland, where a 75-ton electric arc furnace was available.

Rather than simply throwing the F.02 robots into the furnace, Figure first trained them to make their exit with the most spectacular jump possible. At the company's facility in San Jose, the machines practiced jumping onto large airbags, using movements performed by stunt artists as a reference. A specially trained AI model was designed to ensure that the robots jumped into the molten steel as precisely as possible – and that's exactly what they did. Figure explicitly emphasizes that the footage was not AI-generated. The company doesn't reveal how many F.02 units were actually melted down, but says that most of the fleet has now disappeared.

The stunt has been well received on YouTube. Many viewers are praising the elaborate production and Schwarzenegger's appearance. However, the comment section is dominated by one running joke: If there is ever a robot uprising, this video will probably serve as evidence – and it likely won't be viewed favorably for humanity.