Revealed at last year’s Tesla AI Day, the Tesla Bot, aka Optimus, was a junky machine that could barely move around and pick things up. Recently, Tesla teased its AI focus with a video showing the new visual abilities of its Tesla bot.
This video shows how artificial intelligence can render physical landscapes into digital arrays of data. While navigating this, the Tesla Bot can also detect humans and moving objects. Tesla claims it is “building a foundational model for autonomous robots,” while also developing “general-purpose bipedal autonomous humanoid robots that can perform dangerous, repetitive, or tedious tasks.” claims.
Because the technology relies on many of the same principles that Tesla cars have utilized, Several It makes me wonder if they are really “just a car company”. But they confirm in their AI and robotics statement that they are “developing and deploying autonomy in vehicles, robots and more at scale,” confirming that’s not all.
Just a month ago, Tesla showed off its increasingly mobile Optimus robot. However, while it had the underlying technology for limb movement, joint control, maneuverability, and muscle strength, it clearly lacked autonomy. But AI is developing at an astonishing rate, and years of training data from Tesla cars are now collected, refined, and optimized for robots.
The Optimus vision is currently in development, how long will it take for the bots to operate fully autonomously?
Curiously, Tesla’s development of autonomous robots coincides with Elon Musk’s strong opposition to AI development. After signing an open letter calling for a moratorium on giant AI experiments, it doesn’t really make sense to continue developing robots that could potentially house superintelligent AI.
There was nothing but criticism and hopeful optimism in the development of Optimus. Some are convinced that this is an unnecessary and potentially dangerous innovation, while others are convinced that it will change humanity for the better. Tesla’s Optimus development seems a little familiar. We’ve all seen ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ and we all know how it ended. Let’s hope the reality turns out to be different.
