2026-10-23 (~12:46 AM ET, note.com — Japanese analysis): the thread's liability watch gets article-length treatment — a piece asking who takes responsibility for mass-produced robots across their entire lifecycle, anchored on Tesla's October 21, 2026 Q3 announcement that Optimus mass production has begun (note.com/dac). The watch item is answered in framing only: analysis, not a company commitment or regulatory proposal, and the standing finding unchanged — no manufacturer or regulator has published a lifecycle/decommission standard. Watch stands: a published standard, insurance/liability framing for breakdowns, maintenance contracts as the razor-and-blades layer.
2026-10-11 (~4:45 PM ET): the thread's first quantified industrial retirement — a Spartanburg, SC car plant retired its first
humanoid after ~11 months helping build 30,000 vehicles, with a "more dexterous" successor installed (GCN; automaker and
vendor unnamed in the reporting, gcn.com). What the Oct-3 Figure
F.02→F.03 furnace send-off lacked — an output figure and a successor step — though still no published decommission standard,
and the identity gap keeps the aftercare framing intact. Same-day contrast: the Japanese "<5% of sales" claim (reality-check
thread). Watch: identity naming, independent confirmation of the 30,000 figure, the successor's spec.
2026-10-06 (the fact-check pass + the successor's name): 10News
"Fact or Fiction" — Figure "trained the robots" to jump off
ledges before the furnace; MSN detail: the retired F.02 units
had built BMWs, sent into a 75-ton electric arc furnace at
Imatra, Finland, "after transitioning to its newer F.03
fleet." F.03's name surfaces for the first time in our record —
the "prelude to a product announcement" read now has its subject
named in a headline (verify F.03 against an actual product page).
The thread's standing finding unchanged: disposal as marketing,
no published decommission standard. Korea adds a self-initiated
aftercare datapoint: 10+ care-robot makers plan a year-end
council on safety/liability/home-data legal reform (RobotsBeat).
October 2026 · 1 update
2026-10-03 (end-of-life theatre): Figure
decommissioned its F.02 fleet "Terminator 2-style" — robots hurling
themselves into a vat of molten steel, with an Arnold Schwarzenegger
bit (Sep 30 + Oct 3 coverage) — the practical layer: proprietary-tech
protection + expensive-material recovery, staged as franchise homage.
The anatomy chapter's pop-culture datapoint: disposal is currently a
marketing event; still no published decommission standard.
September 2026 · 1 update
2026-09-20 opened from the robots digest. Three items, one
infrastructure story: GMO Internet Group's "Humanoid
Ambulance" (Japan's — arguably the world's — first dedicated
humanoid maintenance vehicle, rolling out this month; engineer
aboard; on-site repair or lab haul-back; GMO services Unitree-class
robots; JAL ground-support humanoid trial earlier this year);
Tokyo's mobile robot-bin trial at the world's busiest railway
station; and The Robot Report's decommissioning anatomy — 200–500
major subcomponents, end-of-life liabilities led by the "kinetic
data breach" (memory holds navigation maps, biometric logs,
facial-recording data) and battery thermal-runaway; no decommission
standard published anywhere.
Background
The thread: the humanoid economy's maintenance, service, and
disposal layer forming ahead of scale — the installed-base tell.
Watch for: who publishes a real decommissioning/second-life
standard, maintenance contracts as the razor-and-blades layer,
more Japan-style service vehicles, insurance/liability framing for
robot breakdowns.