Optimus is an intelligent robot released by Tesla last year. Its design goal is to be able to perform some dangerous or boring tasks for humans, such as carrying heavy objects and purchasing groceries. Optimus is 1.8 meters tall, weighs 57 kilograms, and has a top speed of 8 kilometers per hour. It is equipped with Tesla’s self-developed neural network and computer vision technology.

Tesla says the Optimus robotic display units in its stores are not actual working prototypes, but merely showcases the company’s vision for future products. Currently, the company is developing several working prototypes in the laboratory, but it is not clear when it will be officially released to the market. It was noticed that Tesla plans to first use Optimus robots in its own factories to improve production efficiency. It is reported that the company plans to deploy “thousands” of humanoid robots in its factories.

The reason why Tesla displays Optimus in the store is to use people’s curiosity about robots to increase attention to its automotive products.

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▲ The pictures in this article are from Tesla’s official microblog

“We will still stick to China.” Tesla will help more Chinese supplier partners to establish competitive advantages in many fields and climb up the value chain to further enhance the influence and voice of “Made in China” in the global market, said Tao Lin.

The 5th China International Import Expo (CIE) will be held in Shanghai from November 5-10, 2022. Tesla will bring its new Model S Plaid, Model X Plaid and Tesla humanoid robot to China for the first time.

▲ Tesla humanoid robot

Tesla’s FORM 10-Q filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) shows that in the third quarter of this year, Tesla’s revenue in the Chinese market was $5.131 billion a year-on-year increase of 64.8%.

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The images in this article are from Tesla’s official microblogging site

The Tesla Model S / X Plaid was first released in January 2021 and can be seen as a performance version of the standard model. “. When “Plaid” is turned on, the visual shape of space in front of you changes from a line to a grid, which is consistent with the original meaning of Plaid in English: tartan, chevron. This is where the idea of naming Tesla cars after Plaid comes from.

The Model S Plaid features 2.1 seconds of 100km acceleration, a top speed of 322km/h, and a three-motor all-wheel drive system with a sustained power output of over 1,000 horsepower. Both Plaid models feature a 17-inch center touchscreen with flexible angle adjustment, as well as an in-car screen for the rear seats, and a more powerful in-car gaming system with 10 trillion floating points per second of computing power, comparable to the entertainment performance of today’s new game consoles. The new car also supports Auto Shift, Touch Shift and Push Button Shift, and features a new interior and Yoke steering wheel that breaks away from traditional steering controls. Currently, the Tesla China website is able to reserve (pre-sale orders can be cancelled at any time and receive a full refund) the Model S / X Plaid, but there is still no clear delivery time given.

The Tesla Bot uses the same powerful computer vision as the car; the “brain” processes visual data, makes action decisions and supports communication. “In addition, Tesla Bot is equipped with the same FSD computer and Autopilot-related neural network technology as Tesla’s vehicles. The final price is expected to be no more than $20,000 (about 144,000 CNY). Musk has said that Tesla Bot is initially positioned to replace people in repetitive, boring and dangerous jobs. But the vision is for it to serve millions of households, such as cooking, mowing lawns, caring for the elderly, etc.

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Tesla plans to bring Tesla Bot, a humanoid robot, to the booth at the Expo. The humanoid robot Tesla Bot was unveiled at the recent 2022 AI Day, and Tesla Bot uses the same powerful computer vision as the car; the “brain” that processes visual data, makes action decisions and supports communication is the same chip as Tesla’s vehicles; in addition, Tesla Bot is equipped with the same FSD computer and Autopilot-related neural network technology as Tesla’s vehicles. The Bot is also equipped with the same FSD computer and Autopilot-related neural network technology as Tesla vehicles.

At the Expo, Tesla S3XY family models will make their collective debut, of which the Model S Plaid and Model X Plaid will make their domestic debut.

The Tesla Model S / X Plaid was released as early as January 2021, the Model S Plaid can reach a new height of performance of 2.1 seconds of 100 km acceleration, use of the sustained output of more than 1,000 horsepower three-motor all-wheel drive system, with a very low body wind resistance coefficient, with a new interior, breakthrough traditional steering control method of The new interior, Yoke steering wheel, and a processor with 10 trillion floating point operations per second. Currently, the Tesla China website can reserve (pre-sale orders can be cancelled at any time and receive a full refund) Model S / X Plaid, but there is still no clear delivery time.

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Speaking at an artificial intelligence day in Palo Alto, California, Elon Musk stressed, “There’s still a lot of work to do to improve Optimus Prime and prove its value.” Elon Musk said existing humanoid robots “lack brains” and the ability to solve problems independently. By contrast, he said, Optimus Prime will be an “extremely capable robot,” and Tesla aims to mass-produce millions of them. The robot is expected to cost less than $20,000, he said.

Tesla said the company had developed a prototype robot in February this year. At the event, the prototype Optimus Prime came to the front of the stage and waved to the crowd. This prototype robot skeleton was exposed and the wires and hardware were clearly visible. Tesla also showed a video showing the prototype robot completing simple tasks such as watering plants, carrying boxes and lifting metal poles in a workshop at Tesla’s California factory. “This is the first time a robot has walked on stage tonight without a tether,” Elon Musk said. “We don’t want it to fall on its face just yet.”

Both Elon Musk and Tesla employees acknowledge that there is still much work to be done to achieve the goal of mass-producing low-cost machines that will replace human jobs.

Other automakers, including Toyota and Honda, have previously developed prototypes of humanoid robots capable of complex tasks like playing basketball. Similarly, production robots from ABB and other companies are already a mainstay of the auto manufacturing industry.

But Tesla is the only company working to launch robots for the general public. Tesla staff also showed off its newly designed next-generation Tesla robot at the event, but unlike the prototype that walked onto the stage on its own, this robot was pushed onto the stage by a trio of people. Tesla said the robot will use Tesla-designed components, including a 2.3 kWh battery pack mounted on the robot’s torso, a chip system and motors that drive the robot’s limbs to move, and so on. The entire robot is designed to weigh 73 kilograms.

“It’s not quite ready to walk yet. But I think it will be walking within a few weeks,” Elon Musk said. He hopes the robot can be mass-produced, selling for less than $ 20,000, and has all the fingers can move freely and other features, so that it can operate tools.

Elon Musk said the “AI Day” event was held to recruit more employees for the company, and that the engineers on stage were catering to the needs of the technicians in attendance. Tesla engineers described in detail how Tesla designed the robot’s hands and used collision simulator technology developed by Tesla to test features such as how to avoid injury if the robot’s face hits the ground.

Elon Musk has previously spoken about the risks of artificial intelligence, saying that the mass introduction of robots has the potential to “change civilization” and create “a future of abundance, a future without poverty. That’s when people …… can get anything they want in terms of products and services.” But he said Tesla shareholders have an important role to play in monitoring the company’s behavior.

“If I go crazy, you can fire me,” Elon Musk said. “It’s very important.”

Previously Elon Musk has stressed that the company can ensure the safety of its robots. “Obviously, we’re making the parts needed for a practical humanoid robot, so I think we should probably build it,” he said last year. “If we don’t, somebody else will. …… I think we should do that and make sure it’s safe.”

Many investors and financial analysts have expressed skepticism that Tesla could eventually build such a robot, suggesting that the focus should be on Tesla’s core business such as electric cars.

Friday’s demonstration at Artificial Intelligence Day showed how Elon Musk wants to solve one of the toughest problems in robotics and artificial intelligence: how to build a machine that can replace a human.

For years, companies including Amazon and Google have been working to develop robots that move autonomously, but things like picking up or handling objects with robotic hands are not easy, and the idea that robots can replace human employees is far from a reality.

The robots developed by Tesla demonstrate the company’s long-term strategy to build an automated future. In such a future, computer algorithms are involved in human-like decision-making and can enrich their work experience and theoretical knowledge on their own.

As labor shortages lead to large numbers of manufacturing job openings, companies are conceiving new ways to automate jobs previously performed by humans. Despite the controversy, it would certainly be a breakthrough if a company cracked the method of making humanoid robots.

Gene Munster, managing partner at investment firm Loup Ventures, wrote in an analysis that if the Tesla Optimus robot becomes a reality, it could initially affect manufacturing jobs that account for about 10 percent of the U.S. workforce and are worth up to $500 billion a year.

“The global manual labor market would also be many times larger than the U.S. manufacturing labor market,” he added.

Nonetheless, Elon Musk has always over-promised and always pushed back the timing of his product announcements. 2019 saw the announcement of Tesla’s Cyber electric pickup truck, with windows, that Elon Musk said were “unbreakable,” only to have them knocked out during a demonstration. Tesla has not yet started delivering the Cyber electric pickup. On Thursday, Elon Musk said on Twitter that the pickup would be “waterproof enough to be used temporarily as a boat”.

Tesla also discussed its long-delayed self-driving technology at the event. Engineers developing self-driving software described how they train the software to make decisions, such as when to blend into traffic, and how to speed up the computer’s processing.

In May, Elon Musk said that if Tesla could not achieve full self-driving capabilities, the company’s future “value would be essentially zero. But Tesla’s self-driving technology is facing increasing regulatory investigations and technical hurdles.

Elon Musk has said he expects Tesla to achieve fully autonomous driving this year and mass produce robotic cabs without steering wheels and pedals in 2024.

At the 2019 Autopilot Day event, Elon Musk promised to have 1 million robot cabs on the road by 2020, but so far no such cars have been delivered.

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In response to questions from reporters at the site, Elon Musk said Tesla’s goal is to produce useful robots in the fastest volume possible. The robots are already being tested in Tesla factories to see what they can do.

Will Optimus have personality traits?
Elon Musk revealed that Optimus has various functions to accompany humans, users can make the robot do different things, and Tesla will form different versions of Optimus etc. accordingly in the future.

What is the ultimate goal of Optimus?
Elon Musk stressed that Optimus will have conversational, talking capabilities and further upgrades from a technical standpoint, and that Optimus will be able to do its job more efficiently and should have a wider range of applications in the future.

Elon Musk said he doesn’t know what Optimus will eventually look like and what it will be able to do. Some technologies have already peaked, but Optimus is not one of those technologies, and Optimus will have a dizzying array of capabilities in the next five or 10 years.

Elon Musk also made a point of saying, “I don’t want Optimus to look like the Terminator in the movies. That won’t happen with our robot, designed with a lot of safety barriers, with stop buttons locally and controls remotely, which are very important.”

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As science fiction has been promising us flying cars and robot butlers for decades, people aren’t taking tech companies’ announcements of humanoid robots seriously. When Elon Musk brought a dancer in a robot costume on stage at Tesla’s AI Day last year to announce Tesla’s robotics program, it didn’t help that people took it seriously; many thought it was a joke and didn’t believe Tesla was serious about developing humanoid robots.

However, Elon Musk made it clear that the humanoid robotics program has become a priority for Tesla.

In a product roadmap update in early 2022, Elon Musk said Tesla prioritized the development of the Optimus humanoid robot product in 2022 over the launch of new products, which were delayed until 2023.

Since then, Elon Musk has said on multiple occasions that people don’t appreciate the value Tesla robots could bring to the world. He even said that it could completely change the world economy.

But Tesla doesn’t even need customers to prove the value of Optimus robots; the automaker plans to be its own best customer by having robots working in its factories.

In a job posting for “Motion Planning and Navigation, Tesla Robotics,” Tesla writes that it plans to use “thousands of humanoid robots” in its factories.

"Tesla is on the path to build humanoid bipedal robots on a large scale to automate repetitive and tedious tasks. At the heart of Tesla's robotics, the motion planning stack provides a unique opportunity to research state-of-the-art algorithms for motion planning and navigation, and ultimately deploy them to real-world production applications. Our motion planning software engineers develop and own this stack from inception to deployment. Most importantly, you will see your work repeatedly transported to and utilized by thousands of humanoid robots in our factories."

The company said the first version of Tesla’s robot will focus on completing simple repetitive tasks that would make the robot useful in a factory environment.

Tesla will unveil the first working prototype of its humanoid robot at its Artificial Intelligence Day on Sept. 30.

Electrek’s view

If Tesla can succeed in creating a useful humanoid robot, the benefits are obvious, especially in light of the current labor shortage. But here’s the question: How advanced would this robot be?

We know that Tesla has been investing significant resources in artificial intelligence, and it has made huge advances in computer vision that will also be useful for robots.

However, advances in robotics are also needed to actually make the robot work. Has Tesla achieved this? We’ll find out soon enough.

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