Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, reveals his much-talked-about humanoid robot "Optimus" at the company's "AI Day" event on Friday.
The billionaire said that a business based on robots would be worth more than a business based on cars. He wants to move beyond self-driving cars, which he has promised many times but has not yet come true.
A model of the robot walked onto the stage and waved to the people who were sitting there. In the automaker's factory, a video was shown of the robot carrying a box, watering plants, and moving metal bars.
Musk said at the event at a Tesla office in Palo Alto, California, "Our goal is to make a useful humanoid robot as soon as possible."
"Optimus still needs a lot of work to improve it and show that it works."Musk said that humanoid robots today "lack a brain" because they don't have enough intelligence to move around the world on their own. He also said that they are costly and only made in small numbers.
He said that Optimus, on the other hand, would be an "extremely capable robot" that would be mass-produced in the millions and cost much less than a car, at less than $20,000.Musk was also expected to talk about Tesla's long-awaited technology for self-driving cars.
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In May, the CEO said that the most valuable car company in the world would be worth "basically nothing" if it didn't have fully self-driving cars. The company is also facing increasing regulatory investigations and technological challenges.
Musk wrote on Twitter late Wednesday night, "There will be a lot of technical detail and cool hardware demos." He also said that the event was meant to find new engineers.Tesla's record of live demonstrations is not perfect.
Most launches get cheers, but when Musk had an employee throw a steel ball at the armored window of a new electric pickup truck in 2019, the window broke.The most important test for the robot is whether it can deal with things that don't go as planned.
Musk talked about Tesla's plan for humanoid robots at its AI day in August of last year. This year's AI day was moved from August to September so that the robot prototype could be tested and production could start as early as next year.
On social media, Tesla posted a picture of metal robot hands making a heart shape as a hint about when the bot would be shown to the public. But, said Heni Ben Amor, a robotics professor at Arizona State University, it is very hard to make hands that look like human hands and can do different things.
Musk says that Optimus used to do boring or dangerous jobs like moving parts around Tesla factories or putting a bolt on a car with a wrench. This was a reference to the powerful and good-hearted leader of the Autobots in the Transformers franchise.
"There are so many things that people can do with their hands that robots can't do at all. And that won't change whether the robot is a robot arm or a humanoid, said Jonathan Hurst, the chief technology officer at Agility Robotics, a robot that makes humanoid robots.
Musk has said that robots could be used in homes in the future to do things like make dinner, mow the lawn, take care of the elderly, and even be a "buddy" or sex partner for people.
He will also talk about Tesla's high-speed computer, Dojo, which was shown off last year and is a key part of the company's work on self-driving technology, at the event on Friday.
Musk has said that he thinks Tesla will be fully self-driving this year and that a robotaxi without a steering wheel or pedals will be mass-produced by 2024.Musk promised 1 million robotaxis by 2020 at a "Autonomy" event in 2019, but he hasn't given anyone one yet.
