Elon Musk Announces Production of the Tesla Bot Humanoid Robot
At Tesla AI Day, company founder Elon Musk announced that Tesla will produce a humanoid robot, the Tesla Bot. According to Musk, the machine will be friendly, and also slow and weak enough for a person to outrun and overpower it — just in case a robot uprising ever does happen.
“If you think about what we're doing right now with the cars, Tesla is arguably the biggest robotics company in the world, because our cars are like semi-sentient robots on wheels”
The Tesla Bot will be run by an artificial intelligence system much like the Autopilot in Tesla's electric cars. The robot is being developed to handle a range of dangerous and repetitive human tasks and to navigate the world without step-by-step instructions.
Musk said the robot will be taught simple commands, for example: “Please pick up that bolt and attach it to the car with that wrench.” It will also be able to buy groceries for its owners and carry out other chores.
At the event, Elon Musk only showed what the robot will look like, but Tesla has already modeled its specifications. It will run on the FSD computer, the Dojo supercomputer and neural networks that “recognize the world and understand how to navigate it.”
The Tesla Bot will stand about 173 cm (5 ft 8 in) tall and weigh 57 kg (125 lb), thanks to lightweight body materials. A screen on the robot's face will display useful information. It will carry the same cameras used in Tesla's self-driving cars.
The robot will move at 8 km/h (5 mph), slightly faster than the average human walking pace. It will also be able to lift objects weighing up to 20 kg (45 lb). According to Musk, the first Tesla Bot prototype will appear in 2022.
