Tesla is planning to deploy “thousands of humanoid robots” across its factories, according to new job postings for Tesla’s robotics program, Electrek reported.
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.
