Elon Talks Tesla Bot
AI Day 2 is right around the corner, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk is excited to talk about his upcoming projects, most notably Optimus, the “Tesla Bot”.
In a recent essay published in China Cyberspace magazine, the tech billionaire went into more detail on what is turning out to be an interesting project for Tesla.
Musk talked about the original impetus for the project, which was to create a robot that is supposed to replace people in jobs that are “repetitive, boring, and dangerous”. But he also expanded on that purpose, saying the real vision is to have the bot serving in households, and caring for the elderly.
And it’s the focus on serving households that’s the key to why Optimus looks the way it does.
Because if it was just about replacing jobs which are mind-numbing, or dangerous; a purpose-built robot would be a much better idea - we’ve all seen the robots that fabricate cars. Not exactly the friendly, humanoid-types.
But, if the goal is to fit into society, and take over domestic tasks as well, then it makes much more sense to make Optimus look more like a person.
“[...] human society is based on the interaction of a bipedal humanoid with two arms and ten fingers. So if we want a robot to adapt to its environment and be able to do what humans do, it has to be roughly the same size, shape, and capabilities as a human,”
Elon is very excited about the advancements in Tesla’s Autopilot program, and in some of their other AI projects, because he believes it will lead us into a future where these bots will be cheap enough to purchase as gifts, and make use of.
AI Day 2 is slated for September 2nd, so if this guy can help around the house - and not re-enact scenes from iRobot - then sign us up.