Tesla CEO Elon Musk showed off on Friday a prototype of its humanoid robot 'Optimus', predicting the electric vehicle maker would be able to produce millions and sell them for under $20,000 - less than a third of the price of a Model Y.
Musk said he expected Tesla would be ready to take orders for the robot in three to five years, and described an effort to develop the product over a decade or more, the most detailed vision he has provided to date on a business he has said could be bigger than Tesla's EV revenue.
Tesla's push to design and build mass-market robots that would also be tested by working jobs in its factories sets it apart from other manufacturers that have experimented with humanoid robots.
The eagerly awaited reveal of prototype robots at Tesla's office in Palo Alto, California was also part of what Musk has described as an effort to have Tesla seen as a leader in fields like artificial intelligence, not just a company that makes "cool cars."
An experimental test robot that Tesla said was developed in February walked out to wave at the crowd on Friday, and Tesla showed a video of it doing simple tasks, such as watering plants, carrying boxes and lifting metal bars at a production station at the company's California plant.
But a more streamlined current one, which Musk said was closer to what he hoped to put into production, had to be rolled out on a platform and did a slow wave to the crowd. Musk called it Optimus and said it could be up and running in a matter of weeks.
"We still have a lot of work to do to improve and prove Optimus," Musk said, adding, "I think Optimus will be incredible in five or ten years." and the ability to solve problems independently. By contrast, Optimus is a "very capable robot" that Tesla plans to produce in the millions, he said.
Other automakers such as Toyota and Honda have developed humanoid robot prototypes that can perform complex tasks such as shooting basketball, and production robots such as ABB have become mainstays in car manufacturing.
But Tesla is the only company driving the market opportunity for mass-market robots that can also be used for factory work. Adopt next-generation Tesla bot
We are trying to follow the goal of fastest path to a useful robot that can be made at volume," Musk said.
By developing a robotics business, Musk said, Tesla is shifting the terms of a well-known mission statement that has become part of its appeal to investors and climate activists by committing to "accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy."
"Optimus is not directly in line with accelerating sustainable energy," Musk said. "I think the mission does somewhat broaden with the advent of Optimus to - you know, I don't know:
making the future awesome."
MIXED REVIEWS
Musk has described the event as intended to recruit workers, and the engineers on stage catered to a technical audience. They detailed the process by which Tesla designed robot hands and used crash-simulator technology to test the robot's ability to fall on its face without breaking.
Musk, who has spoken before about the risks of artificial intelligence, said the mass rollout of robots had the potential to “transform civilization” and create “a future of abundance, a future of no poverty.” But he said he believed it was important that Tesla shareholders had a role in vetting the company's efforts. "If I go crazy, you can fire me," Musk said. "This is important."
Many of the reactions on Twitter have been positive, and the pace of Tesla's development efforts since last August when it announced a project that used a stunt in which a person in a white suit simulated a humanoid robot. is focused on Henri Ben Amor, a robotics professor at Arizona State University, said Musk's $20,000 price target is "a good deal," given that current humanoid robots cost about $100,000. .
"There is a certain disconnect between ambition and what they present," he said. “We still have a lot of work to do in terms of dexterity, speed and steady gait.”
Aaron Johnson, a professor of mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, also said the need for robots is debatable.
"What's really impressive is that they got to that level very quickly. It's still a little unclear what exactly the use case is for them to make millions of these," Johnson said.
Tesla also spoke at the event about its self-driving technology, which was significantly delayed. An engineer working on self-driving software explained how to train the software to choose an action. B. When did they merge into the traffic and how did they accelerate the computer decision-making process?
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