On Friday, Elon Musk CEO of Tesla unveiled the much-awaited humanoid robot ‘’Optimus’’ at the AI Day event. He said that a robot business will be worth more than his electric cars. He hopes to expand beyond electric cars that have not yet become reality despite efforts.
In the event, the prototype of the robot walked on the stage. Also, waved to the audience seated at the event. A video shows the audience where the robot moves around carrying a box. Watering plants and moving metal bars in the automaker’s factory. At the event, Elon Musk said, ‘’ our goal is to make a useful humanoid robot as quickly as possible. There’s still a lot of work to refine Optimus and prove it.’’
Currently, humanoid Robots Missing a brain
Musk said the robots are missing a brain. They don’t have the intelligence for navigation. Meanwhile, these robots are very expensive and are not made commercially. Considering the expense and efforts, these are made in low volume.
He adds Optimus is an extremely capable robot. It will be made in high volume-ultimately millions of units. However, the Optimus robot is less expensive in comparison to a car, at under $20,000.
Tesla’s long-delayed self-driving technology
Al day event aims at recruiting engineers. Elon Musk later tweeted that ‘’there will be lots of technical details and cool hardware demons adding to the recruitment of engineers through events.
In May, Musk said that the world’s most valuable carmaker would be ‘’worth basically zero’’ without achieving full self-driving capability. However, the firm faces technological hurdles and regulatory investigations. All that adds to delays in self-driving technology.
Possibly, Musk’s firm will start robot production next year. It was delayed in August last year and delayed this year’s event from August to have its Robot prototype working.
Meanwhile, Heni Ben Amor, a Robotics professor at Arizona State University said that building a humanoid robot, with versatile hands that can manipulate different objects is extremely challenging.
Also, Jonathan Hurst, chief technology officer at Agility Robotics, a humanoid robot firm, told Reuters, “There’s so much about what people can do dexterously that’s very, very hard for robots. And that’s not going to change whether the robot is a robot arm or whether it’s in the shape of a humanoid,”
