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Tesla CEO Elon Musk and leaders from the company's AI and hardware teams are expected to talk astatine the company's AI Day 2022, an engineer-recruiting event, which volition beryllium live-streamed connected Friday starting astir 5:00 p.m. successful California. You tin watch AI Day 2022 here.
During the past AI Day successful August 2021, Musk said Tesla was going to physique a humanoid robot, which is referred to arsenic either the Tesla Bot oregon Optimus today.
"It's intended to beryllium friendly, of course, and navigate done a satellite of humans, and destruct dangerous, repetitive and boring tasks," Musk said astatine the time.
Tesla didn't person a hardware prototype to amusement past twelvemonth and made the 2021 announcement with an histrion dressed successful a Tesla Bot assemblage suit dancing connected stage. The stunt drew sneers from critics and cheers from fans.
This year, investors are expecting a existent tech objection of the robot, on with updates connected Tesla's advancement processing self-driving exertion that tin crook the company's existing electrical vehicles into robotaxis.
Musk has been promising a genuinely self-driving Tesla since 2016 erstwhile helium said a coast-to-coast demo would hap by the extremity of 2017. To-date the institution has lone released operator assistance systems that request to beryllium perpetually supervised by a quality operator who remains attentive to the roadworthy and their car, acceptable to instrumentality implicit astatine immoderate time.
When Musk primitively floated the humanoid robot conception astatine AI Day 2021, Musk said of Optimus, "It should beryllium capable to, 'please spell to the store and get maine the pursuing groceries,' that benignant of thing."
Later, Musk said that robots made by Tesla volition 1 time beryllium worthy much than its cars, and that thousands of them would beryllium enactment to enactment moving parts astir the factories, wherever humans physique cars and batteries.
During Tesla's 2021 fourth-quarter net call, Musk remarked: "If you deliberation astir the economy-- the instauration of the system is labor. Capital instrumentality is distilled labor. So what happens if you don't really person a labour shortage? I'm not definite what an system adjacent means astatine that point. That's what Optimus is about, truthful precise important."
Tesla has a mixed grounds with automation.
As Bernstein elder probe expert Toni Sacconaghi wrote successful a September 30 enactment up of AI Day 2022, In 2018 Tesla "had mistakenly tried to hyper-automate its last assembly (i.e. putting parts into cars)." The effect was that Musk soon admitted "excessive automation astatine Tesla was a mistake," and "humans are underrated."
Tesla brought much radical backmost to its manufacturing and assembly lines aft that, but Sacconaghi writes that contiguous Tesla is over-automating its lawsuit service. Tesla owners mostly find it hard to get successful interaction with idiosyncratic income and work reps astatine Tesla, and are steered to behaviour each imaginable solution of complaints done Tesla's mobile app.
A long-time robotics engineer, Alexander Kernbaum, who present serves arsenic interim manager of the vaunted probe and improvement non-profit SRI, says whether Tesla impresses with its robotics update astatine AI Day oregon not, the institution has the resources to make thing meaningful and has inspired caller involvement successful the field.
However, Kernbaum notes, erstwhile it comes to creating a robot that tin marque a quality successful an car assembly plant, there's truly nary request for Tesla to make a bi-pedal robot. "Mobile robots volition find uses," helium explains, "But mobility should beryllium arsenic elemental arsenic imaginable for a mill situation meaning wheels would beryllium the mode to go, not legs."
Robotic legs necessitate a batch of power, for 1 thing, which would enactment strain connected immoderate artillery Tesla develops for its robotics. Additionally, legged robots -- similar radical -- tin travel and fall. Wheeled robots would not beryllium arsenic apt to extremity over. The information interest should beryllium tantamount successful a factory, Kernbaum suggests.
Kernbaum believes Tesla would beryllium best-served to absorption connected robotic hands. He said, "Hands are similar the eventual multi-tool. Dexterity and in-hand entity manipulation are the expansive 10-year challenges that volition person an evident interaction connected each precision manufacturing and connected everything really."
AI Day 2022 volition beryllium the company's archetypal large lawsuit since erstwhile AI person of Tesla Andrej Karpathy resigned. AI Day precedes Tesla's third-quarter conveyance accumulation and deliveries study which is expected wrong days.
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