Robotics

Musk expects Tesla Bot to be a much bigger business than its cars

Musk expects Tesla Bot to be a much bigger business than its cars
Tesla's Optimus robot is now walking and using its humanoid hands for basic tasks
Tesla's Optimus robot is now walking and using its humanoid hands for basic tasks
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Tesla's Optimus robot is now walking and using its humanoid hands for basic tasks
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Tesla's Optimus robot is now walking and using its humanoid hands for basic tasks
Robots working on robots: it's in the pipeline
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Robots working on robots: it's in the pipeline
Humanoid hands give the Tesla Bot access to a broad range of tools
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Humanoid hands give the Tesla Bot access to a broad range of tools
Demonstrating its ability to grip, lift, balance and walk
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Demonstrating its ability to grip, lift, balance and walk
The Tesla Bot has made impressive progress in around 19 months since it was first announced
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The Tesla Bot has made impressive progress in around 19 months since it was first announced
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As part of its 2023 Investor Day, Tesla has given the world a glimpse of where progress is at with its latest-gen Optimus humanoid robot. Nineteen months since it was first announced, the Tesla Bot is now walking, picking things up and doing basic tasks.

An uncharacteristically subdued Elon Musk presented some short video on the Optimus prototype, noting that as recently as October last year, it had to be rolled out on stage to wave like a politician.

"It's worth bearing in mind that when we did AI day, this version of Optimus didn't walk at all," said Musk. "So the rate of improvement here is quite significant. It's obviously not doing parkour, but it is walking around, and we have multiple copies, I suppose, of Optimus."

The video shows Optimus walking around – albeit fairly slowly in comparison to the parkour-capable Atlas robot by Boston Dynamics. It also makes use of its opposable thumbs and human-like hands, in a sequence in which one Optimus robot unplugs a dismembered Optmus arm from a test stand, picks it up, and carries it over to a workstation where another bot is working on a third. With some crafty editing, it gives the impression that the first robot is holding the arm in place while the second bolts it onto the third robot in a mockup of android-based manufacturing.

Robots working on robots: it's in the pipeline
Robots working on robots: it's in the pipeline

If it suffers in comparison to Atlas, it's not alone. Atlas is the most advanced humanoid robot on the planet, and has been for many years now. But the context here is important; Boston Dynamics has been working on bio-mimetic robots since 1992. It unveiled its first humanoid PETMAN robot in 2009, and within two years it was shown walking, squatting, kneeling and balancing against push forces. Atlas made its debut in 2013, and has taken a solid 10 years to learn to dance, do parkour, and begin to perform some basic tasks. So it seems fair to give the youthful Optimus bot time to catch up.

"The thing that Tesla brings to the table that others don't have, we're the most advanced in real-world AI," said Musk. "So the same AI that drives the car ... You can think of the car as a robot on wheels, and this is a robot on legs. I don't think there's anyone even close to Tesla on solving real-world AI. It's not that helpful to have a humanoid robot if you have to program every action. It needs to be able to walk around autonomously and solve tasks. you should be able to instruct it in simple things, by showing visually the robot needs to do, or just telling it what to do. That's the key advantage that we have."

"We're also good at designing things for manufacturing, and manufacturing at scale," he continued. "The actuators in Optimus are all custom designed Tesla actuators. We designed the electric motor, the gearbox, the power electronics, obviously the battery pack, everything else that goes into Optimus. We were quite surprised to find how little was available off the shelf. There's a vast number of electric motors and gearboxes and whatnot available in the world, and we found none of them were useful in a humanoid robot. So the same team that designed the groundbreaking electric motors in, say, the Model S Plaid, designed the actuators in the robot. For practical purposes what this means is that we should be able to bring an actual product to market at scale that is useful, far faster than anyone else."

Humanoid hands give the Tesla Bot access to a broad range of tools
Humanoid hands give the Tesla Bot access to a broad range of tools

While this remains to be seen, it's definitely a departure from the research-first, limited-scale commercialization approach Boston Dynamics has taken. Tesla is developing its robot to be a mass-manufactured product from the get-go, and one useful enough to become a general-purpose labor saver.

Of course, general-purpose humanoid robots are projected to have an incredible impact on society as a whole, and while Musk is pushing hard to get these things built and into service as quickly as possible, he's well aware of what they could mean.

"Assuming the things I'm saying are true, at least, they are true, it's just a question of the timing, you start getting into interesting questions," he says. "You can see a home use for robots, certainly industrial uses for humanoid robots. I think we might exceed a 1:1 ratio of humanoid robots to humans. It's not even clear what an economy means at that point. If an economy is output per person times persons, but if output is much higher and there's no limit on persons, then what's the actual limit on the economy? We're still pretty far from Kardashev scales here, but we're getting there."

When asked if near-future generations of AI, combined with humanoid robots, could start helping Tesla through its automotive "production hell," Musk didn't think so, but admitted that even he might be out of a job once they can.

"I don't see AI helping us make cars any time soon," he said. "At that point, I mean, there's no point in any of us working I think. We should all just chill out. I am a little worried about the AI stuff, I think it's something we should be concerned about. I think we need some kind of regulatory authority overseeing AI development and making sure it's operating within the public interest. It's quite a dangerous technology. I fear I may have done some things to accelerate it, which is ... I don't know ... I think Tesla's doing good things in AI, but this one stresses me out, so I don't know what to say about it."

The Tesla Bot has made impressive progress in around 19 months since it was first announced
The Tesla Bot has made impressive progress in around 19 months since it was first announced

Still, it's full steam ahead on the Tesla Bot, and Musk still believes investors don't yet know what they're looking at.

"It's probably the least understood or appreciated part of what we're doing at Tesla, but will probably be worth significantly more than the car side of things long-term," he said.

You can jump to 1:48:20 in the video below to see where Optimus is at.

2023 Investor Day

Source: Tesla

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14 comments
14 comments
martinwinlow
"Still, it's full steam ahead on the Tesla Bot, and Musk still believes investors don't yet know what they're looking at." History repeating itself, then...? Most of the population of the planet had no idea what an 'EV' was until Musk woke them all up (latterly with a huge fright, in the case of pretty much every single high-ranking automotive manager the world over).

Meanwhile the irony (if that's the best word) of "I am a little worried about the AI stuff, I think it's something we should be concerned about. I think we need some kind of regulatory authority overseeing AI development and making sure it's operating within the public interest. It's quite a dangerous technology." ... when there must be at least 3, serious, on-going investigations into Tesla's autonomous vehicle technology should not be lost on us all!
WONKY KLERKY
ref BS. + ISO. Stds:
Can it dance?
Unsold
I guess it all boils down to whether they're an appliance or a utility. And whether you'd want one scissoring around your living space.
TechGazer
There's always fear about changes. People feared the first cars: too dangerous to be allowed on roads. People feared automation: toss those wooden shoes into the evil machinery! People will fear AIs and personal robots ... and their kids will use them, and then their kids will wonder how humans managed without them.

Bioweapons or nuclear weapons could wipe out the whole hhuman race. AIs and robots will just wipe out old ways of doing things, and life won't be wiped out if we no longer wash dishes by hand or spend hours a day commuting.
Cymon Curcumin
These things are going to have to get a lot more competent before people start buying them in the millions, let alone 8 billion.

And saying they are “AI driven” (as opposed to programming almost every sequence of moves) can mean a lot of things. They are a long way from telling a bot to do what someone demonstrates and telling them to let the supervisor know if they have any questions.
Bob Flint
How about instead of fingers, to grab a drill, put each finger to work with different bits...
Karmudjun
We need Asimov's rules as the AI "prime directive". Otherwise, let Musk spend his money advancing the technology. And send him to Mars.
Smokey_Bear
As I ponder the future, I also have these questions. I believe, based on what I see/read, 95+% of people will be out of a job by 2040. It's a similar S-curve that EV's are doing. They are just beginning to kick into high gear, and EV adoption is skyrocketing.
My personal opinion, is humanoid robot adoption is 10 years behind electric vehicle adoption. Meaning how common it is to see an EV on the road today, will be how common it is to see a humanoid robot in 10 years. In 10 years virtually all new cars are electric, and in 20 years virtually all jobs are done by humanoid robots.
Daishi
I've been calling humanoid robots good science projects and science fiction but bad science my entire life and I am in do danger of changing my mind about it now. Even Elon admitted many parts in the industry were not sufficient so they had to design and build their own custom parts for it. What does that mean for interchangeable parts, repairability, and cost? That's a whole lot of small complex and expensive moving parts to achieve 1/100th of the mobility a wheel can achieve with 1 moving part. In a couple more years maybe they will be making parkour videos too. Atlas is 30 years in development without a useful consumer product anywhere in the foreseeable future.
Treon Verdery
Fourteen times lighter robot parts with Laser peening.
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