Jerry Pratt
American robotics scientist; chief scientist at Figure AI.
Jerry Pratt is an American robotics scientist whose academic and applied work has shaped multiple generations of full-form humanoid platforms. He is currently chief scientist at Figure AI, Inc., having joined the company after an extended tenure as senior scientist at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) in Pensacola, Florida.
Role in humanoid robotics
Pratt's research at MIT and at IHMC focused on dynamic locomotion, whole-body control, and the software architecture required for humanoid platforms to operate reliably in unstructured environments. His work with IHMC on the Atlas platform during the DARPA Robotics Challenge was widely cited in the robotics community and produced software components that continue to influence the field.
His transition to Figure AI represented a shift from research-oriented humanoid work to production-oriented humanoid development. As chief scientist at Figure, he has been publicly credited with the platform's rapid iteration from Figure 01 to Figure 03 and with the strategic direction of the company's whole-body control and manipulation software.
Background
Pratt received his doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His doctoral research at the MIT Leg Laboratory (under Marc Raibert) established the technical vocabulary that has informed his career. Following MIT, he joined IHMC, where he built one of the leading academic humanoid research programs in the United States.