Tesla CEO Elon Musk and leaders from the corporate’s AI and {hardware} groups are anticipated to talk on the firm’s AI Day 2022, an engineer-recruiting occasion, which shall be live-streamed on Friday beginning round 5:00 p.m. in California. You may watch AI Day 2022 here.
Over the last AI Day in August 2021, Musk mentioned Tesla was going to construct a humanoid robotic, which is known as both the Tesla Bot or Optimus at present.
“It is meant to be pleasant, in fact, and navigate by a world of people, and get rid of harmful, repetitive and boring duties,” Musk mentioned on the time.
Tesla did not have a {hardware} prototype to point out final yr and made the 2021 announcement with an actor wearing a Tesla Bot physique go well with dancing on stage. The stunt drew sneers from critics and cheers from followers.
This yr, traders expect an actual tech demonstration of the robotic, together with updates on Tesla’s progress creating self-driving know-how that may flip the corporate’s present electrical automobiles into robotaxis.
Musk has been promising a very self-driving Tesla since 2016 when he mentioned a coast-to-coast demo would occur by the top of 2017. To-date the corporate has solely launched driver help methods that must be continuously supervised by a human driver who stays attentive to the street and their automobile, able to take over at any time.
When Musk initially floated the humanoid robotic idea at AI Day 2021, Musk mentioned of Optimus, “It ought to be capable of, ‘please go to the shop and get me the next groceries,’ that form of factor.”
Later, Musk mentioned that robots made by Tesla will at some point be value greater than its vehicles, and that hundreds of them can be put to work transferring elements across the factories, the place people construct vehicles and batteries.
Throughout Tesla’s 2021 fourth-quarter earnings call, Musk remarked: “If you concentrate on the economy– the inspiration of the financial system is labor. Capital tools is distilled labor. So what occurs in the event you do not even have a labor scarcity? I am undecided what an financial system even means at that time. That is what Optimus is about, so essential.”Â
Tesla has a mixed record with automation.
As Bernstein senior analysis analyst Toni Sacconaghi wrote in a September 30 be aware forward of AI Day 2022, In 2018 Tesla “had mistakenly tried to hyper-automate its remaining meeting (i.e. placing elements into vehicles).” The end result was that Musk quickly admitted “extreme automation at Tesla was a mistake,” and “people are underrated.”
Tesla introduced extra folks again to its manufacturing and meeting traces after that, however Sacconaghi writes that at present Tesla is over-automating its customer support. Tesla homeowners usually discover it troublesome to get in contact with particular person gross sales and repair reps at Tesla, and are steered to conduct all attainable decision of complaints by Tesla’s cellular app.
An extended-time robotics engineer, Alexander Kernbaum, who now serves as interim director of the vaunted analysis and growth non-profit SRI, says whether or not Tesla impresses with its robotics replace at AI Day or not, the corporate has the assets to develop one thing significant and has impressed new curiosity within the area.
Nonetheless, Kernbaum notes, with regards to making a robotic that may make a distinction in an automobile meeting plant, there’s actually no want for Tesla to develop a bi-pedal robotic. “Cell robots will discover makes use of,” he explains, “However mobility needs to be so simple as attainable for a manufacturing unit setting which means wheels can be the way in which to go, not legs.”
Robotic legs require quite a lot of energy, for one factor, which might put pressure on any battery Tesla develops for its robotics. Moreover, legged robots — like folks — can journey and fall. Wheeled robots wouldn’t be as more likely to tip over. The security concern needs to be tantamount in a manufacturing unit, Kernbaum suggests.
Kernbaum believes Tesla can be best-served to concentrate on robotic palms. He mentioned, “Arms are like the final word multi-tool. Dexterity and in-hand object manipulation are the grand 10-year challenges that can have an apparent influence on all precision manufacturing and on the whole lot actually.”
AI Day 2022 would be the firm’s first main occasion since former AI chief of Tesla Andrej Karpathy resigned. AI Day precedes Tesla’s third-quarter car manufacturing and deliveries report which is predicted inside days.
