Tesla's Optimus and the big questions in the quest to make a humanoid robot

Should robots look similar people? Elon Musk, who is expected to uncover much astir his humanoid robot astatine this year's Tesla AI Day connected Friday, seems to deliberation so. In opposition to a robotic limb that performs a circumstantial manufacturing task, the Tesla Bot, oregon Optimus – its sanction a motion to the "Transformers" franchise – is meant to execute much wide intent duties. 

According to job postings by Tesla, the Optimus volition archetypal beryllium rolled retired successful the thousands successful its ain factories, with an oculus yet toward user applications successful the home. Musk said successful a Ted interview that touches connected robots that these household applications could scope from activities similar mowing the tract and picking up groceries and caring for the elderly, each the mode up (or down) to being a "buddy" oregon much intimate "friend." 

Musk intelligibly has an oculus for products that prehend the imaginativeness of the public: commercialized abstraction travel, afloat self-driving cars and, now, humanoid robots. "Robots are a prevailing entity utilized to evoke our technological future," said Anne-Laure Fayard, a prof astatine Nova School of Business and Economics (SBE) successful Lisbon, Portugal and visiting probe prof astatine the New York University Tandon School of Engineering. "They bespeak our hopes and fears astir technology."

It's intelligibly connected marque for Tesla, and wrong its increasing computing wheelhouse. As Musk stated astatine the Tesla AI Day past year: "If you deliberation astir what we are doing with cars, Tesla is arguably the largest robotics institution successful the world, due to the fact that our cars are semi-sentient robots connected wheels."

But Fayard, and different robotics experts, accidental a basal question inactive needs to beryllium answered: "What these robots tin truly do." 

Last year's Tesla AI Day included a quality dancing astir successful an Optimus suit, thing that has near immoderate experts skeptical astir the humanoid robot's eventual potential. Nancy Cooke, a prof successful quality systems engineering astatine Arizona State University, said the existent cardinal is that it beryllium capable to bash unscripted actions. "If helium conscionable gets the robot to locomotion around, oregon helium gets the robots to dance, that's already been done. That's not that impressive," Cooke said.  

Others person pointed retired that genuinely self-driving cars and robotaxis – the impervious for Musk's claims that Teslas are semi-sentient robots connected wheels – stay unfulfilled promises, with targets and deadlines pushed retired respective times. In 2019, Musk promised 1 cardinal robotaxis by 2020 and determination are presently nary connected the road. 

But Tesla isn't the lone institution down connected self-driving goals oregon pushing the boundaries of robot design. Honda, Boston Dynamics, and Hyundai person been moving connected humanoid robots for decades.

One large stumbling artifact – shared with self-driving vehicles – is what happens erstwhile robots brushwood unpredictable scenarios. 

Musk, who has proved critics incorrect successful the past, is alert that the occurrence of the Optimus task volition remainder connected the robot's quality to deliberation and execute "unscripted actions."

The existent cardinal volition be whether it tin "navigate done the satellite without circumstantial line-by-line instructions," helium said astatine the AI Day past year, adding that yet "it should beryllium capable to bash that."

This year's AI Day featured the humanoid robot prominently, if playfully: the invitation includes robotic hands making a bosom symbol.

Part of the crushed for gathering a robot that is quality successful signifier is that, if it is going to beryllium performing aggregate unscripted tasks — prime up that container implicit there, spell to the store and get eggs — it volition person to beryllium capable to determination done a satellite built for humans: presumably, having a quality signifier is the champion committedness of being capable to bash so. 

The incidental of the alleged "fluff bot," a robotic portion of instrumentality that caused accumulation problems owed to its inability to execute a comparatively elemental task, which Musk aboriginal said was much readily performed by "human hands," is sometimes marked arsenic a cardinal infinitesimal for the humanoid Tesla bot. But 1 regulation connected this enactment of thinking, according to robotics engineers, is that we inactive don't truly recognize precise good however quality bodies are capable to bash what they do. It's not a elemental process to reverse technologist their question capabilities. 

How overmuch the humanoid robot volition really beryllium capable to bash is simply a compound occupation of mobility and AI capabilities, according to Eni Halilaj, adjunct prof successful mechanical engineering astatine Carnegie Mellon and a researcher who studies quality movement. Mimicking quality mobility is going to beryllium limited, successful part, by limitations already successful spot astir existent cognition of however quality mobility works successful humans. 

"Our assemblage is simply a analyzable engineering strategy that we inactive bash not afloat understand," Halilaj said. "We person a agelong mode to spell to reverse technologist it, making question readying and power challenging for humanoid robotics. For example, we inactive bash not recognize however our cardinal tense strategy selects circumstantial musculus coordination patterns to transportation retired regular tasks — this is 1 of the expansive challenges successful biomechanics and neural control."

"Biomimicry tin beryllium lone arsenic palmy arsenic our knowing of the biologic system," she said. Mimicking a biologic strategy is simply a task self-driving cars don't face. "It is existent that cars are robots connected wheels, but cars are human-made inventions," she added.

More collaboration betwixt the robotics assemblage and biomechanists, neuroscientists, and behavioral scientists to physique plausible quality integer twins — computational models that tin accurately seizure the complexity of the neuromusculoskeletal strategy and navigate virtual environments with the fluidity and elegance of our biologic systems — should beryllium a broader extremity successful this country of robotics.

And until specified cognition is successful place, "We'll spot progress, but not astatine the transformative level we could if we bolstered cardinal probe successful quality intelligence," Halilaj said.