Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, introduced the company’s Tesla Bot on Friday. The robot, code-named Optimus, walked across a stage, waved, and slowly pump its arms in a dance-like motion. It may be available for purchase by 2027.
According to Musk, sales would start “probably within three years and not more than five years” after the creation of a viable humanoid robot.
Although the robot was not as impressive as some others, such as Boston Dynamics’ Atlas, it was nevertheless impressive considering how quickly Tesla built it. “The robot is much more capable than what we have demonstrated. Simply put, we didn’t want it to crash to the ground “Musk made the joke at Tesla AI Day 2022, an exhibition of the robot and the business’s self-driving car technology, known as Full Self-Driving, or FSD.
Musk’s ultimate goal is to produce millions of Tesla Bots and sell each one for $20,000. However, you should take those predictions with a grain of salt. Although it has led the rest of the industry toward an electric vehicle future, Tesla has been a successful automaker despite having missed numerous deadlines.
Given how common and powerful Tesla thinks the robots may be, the Optimus project is among the most ambitious in the robotics field even though it is still early. But making progress is challenging. Competitors like Boston Dynamics have been working on humanoid robots for years, but they have only created prototypes so far. Robots with fewer capabilities are more prevalent, such as wheeled delivery robots or Amazon’s Astro, a tablet with a camera for the home.
While Tesla’s car-piloting technology and robots must take into account the enormous variety of the real world, artificial intelligence technology performs best with certain tasks. Optimus will likely begin his existence in safety. The business intends to utilize it initially in Tesla’s plants.
According to Musk, jobs might entail delivering parts to conventional robots on the production line.
According to Musk, “Optimus will be useful in an exponentially growing number of circumstances.” Really, really quickly.
Tesla Bots on stage
Musk displayed two machines. Mechanical actuators that are readily available were used to construct the first, walking model. The second, whose hands and legs were propelled by Tesla’s actuators, was incapable of walking but had grasping hands. The robots could perform additional tasks, such as picking up boxes and bending at the waist.
The second Optimus robot, according to Musk, “wasn’t quite ready to walk, but I expect it’ll walk in a few weeks.”
At 161 pounds, the second Optimus prototype is heavy (73 kg). It makes use of a variant of the FSD computing platform, which also drives Tesla’s autonomous driving technology. According to one engineer, its battery pack’s 2.3-kilowatt-hour capacity is “ideal for a full day’s work.” It uses approximately 100 watts of power while seated and 500 watts when moving quickly. That resembles a high-end gaming computer.
The first robot shuffled along at a leisurely speed, putting one foot barely in front of the other. Its walk was somewhat twisting due to its bowed knees. It had waist flexibility and could bend. The majority of the LEDs on its body were green, and its chest held a sizable computer with two revolving fans to cool the Processor cores.
The degrees of freedom of the Optimus robots—basically, the various ways they might bend or twist at different joints—were highlighted by Tesla engineers. According to Tesla, the entire robot body has more than 28 degrees of movement, and each hand has 11.
The Tesla Bot is managed by the same AI program that Tesla uses to drive its vehicles. The same technology is used, such as measuring the “occupancy” of adjacent places. As opposed to driving simulators, real-world surroundings are used for training, according to Tesla.
Musk didn’t hold back while making futuristic claims about his robots. Robotic labor ushers in a new era of economics, one Musk described as one of “plenty, a future without poverty, a future where you can have whatever you want in terms of products and services.” It truly represents a fundamental shift in civilization as we know it.
