During Tesla AI Day on Thursday 19th August, Elon Musk announced that Tesla will be building a humanoid robot that runs on artificial intelligence – it’s called the Tesla Bot. The plan is to have a prototype ready in 2022. For purposes of introducing the Tesla Bot, Musk had a human – dressed as the robot, do a short dance before he elaborated on the company’s plans for the robot.
Musk’s intention for the Tesla Bot is “to be friendly, of course” and “navigate a world built for humans and eliminate dangerous, repetitive and boring tasks”. To be able to achieve this is no mean feat. The idea of humanoid robots has been around for many years – there are movies filmed around this idea and companies attempting to create said robots. While artificial intelligence has certainly advanced over the years, it is still nowhere near what this Tesla Bot aims to accomplish.
Musk has mentioned that the challenging part about creating a “useful humanoid robot is it can’t navigate the world without being explicitly trained”. This means extremely specific “line by line instructions”. An example he gave was, “please go to the store and get me the following groceries”. This needs to be carefully and meticulously programmed if it is going to have a chance at doing simple tasks it’s being asked to.
Here are the specs of the Tesla Bot shared during Musk’s presentation:
Tesla has been a big name in technology and innovation, they are planning to use a similar technology to what is being used on their autonomous cars on the Tesla Bot. However, that same technology is what’s causing some concerns from the government.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is in the midst of investigating the Tesla Autopilot (self-driving system). There have been a number of reported crashes into parked emergency vehicles with this feature and the misuse of this feature by intoxicated drivers.
Despite these reports, Elon Musk is still one of the richest man in the world with his works in Tesla, PayPal, SpaceX and The Boring Company.
Watch Musk’s Tesla Bot presentation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUP6Z5voiS8
