If Elon Musk has his way, we’ll soon only have to act when we really feel like it. To this end, he wants to develop a smart Tesla robot by 2022. This should be based on the same autopilot system in Tesla cars.
He must be friendly. Execute the commands. And doing a boring and dangerous job for us. This is how Elon Musk imagines the Tesla Bot he used last weekend Tesla AI Day Foot.
In fact, Tesla’s three-hour AI Day was primarily about Tesla’s autopilot and the “Dojo” project, through which Tesla wants to enable a “super-fast” training computer for more complex neural network models.
But at the end of the event, Tesla boss Elon Musk took the stage himself to present his latest project, the Tesla Bot. For Musk, robot development is the next logical step for Tesla.
From robots on wheels to a Tesla Bot
Musk claimed that Tesla is the “world’s largest robotics company”. Because in principle one develops “robots on wheels” with Tesla’s semi-autonomous electric vehicles.
Turning an AI-based vehicle autopilot system into a human form only makes sense, Musik said.
Your Tesla Bot should be equipped with an autopilot system accordingly. These include eight cameras and a fully self-driving computer, which drivers already know from Tesla cars.
We can expect this from the Tesla Bot
So the Tesla Bot will basically be an autopilot system in human form. Elon Musk has already shown how the future Tesla Bot can be imagined.
The robot should be about 1.72 meters long, weigh about 57 kilograms and be able to lift up to 68 kilograms. However, the bot is not particularly fast. Musk wants to limit its top speed to eight kilometers per hour so the robot can be “sinked” if necessary, Musk joked.
The “face” should also be an informational screen. The Tesla Bot should first and foremost be friendly, reassuring Musk and people to help them with boring, repetitive, or even dangerous tasks.
Accordingly, the areas of application can be diverse and range from industrial to private home robotics.
The challenge, according to Musk, is to design the robot in such a way that it can understand all commands without having to program it sentence by sentence.
In other words: If someone tells their Tesla robot to buy milk from the supermarket, they have to reach the robot just like the command: “Buy rolls from the bakery” or “Build this screw in this machine!”
Work becomes voluntary
But Elon Musk doesn’t seem to have any doubts that this is possible. He promised: “I think we can do that.” We will do that until next year. A prototype will be presented in 2022.
But Elon Musk’s vision goes beyond a simple assistant robot. In the long run, Musk is of the opinion that robots can completely replace humans at work. Accordingly, we have to act only when we really want to. Musk believes that the work can become completely voluntary.
Accordingly, it supports an unconditional basic income. Because Musk thinks: Robots like the Tesla Bot have nearly unlimited potential for the economy.
Is Tesla just trying to get distracted?
The Tesla bot looks good, but how realistic are those promises? Given the major problems Tesla currently has with autopilot, both technically and legally, as a consumer, one might be concerned that the autopilot would operate seamlessly in a human form.
Plus, the schedule seems more than ambitious. Robotics specialists like Boston Dynamics, who have invested many years and even more money in robot projects such as the police dog Digidog or the grooming robot, are still far from being as smart as Musk promising for next year.
some suspect Hence the fact that the Tesla Bot is only meant to distract critics and skeptics from the current problems surrounding Tesla’s autopilot.
However, the Tesla robot is probably not exactly an empty promise. Because anyone who knows Elon Musk knows he’s going to introduce a robot in 2022. But will this be the fully functional robot he announced at Tesla AI Day? Doubtful!
As was the case with his “Hyperloop” project, we’ll likely see the first (mini) stage on the way to a Tesla robot next year. But who knows, Elon Musk was good to get a surprise more than once.
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