Tesla is already producing what chief executive Elon Musk views as “robots on wheels”, so it should come as little surprise to know that his company, the world's most valuable car maker, is also creating humanoid robots.
And when we say robots, that does mean the type we see in Hollywood sci-fi movies, where they move around and perform meaningful functions.
Here's what we know so far about the Tesla Optimus robot:
When will Optimus be ready?
The indication is that it is not too far off after the robot went on show at Tesla's AI Day on September 30.
The prototype walked out on stage and waved to the crowd before a video showed it doing simple tasks, such as watering plants, carrying boxes and lifting metal bars at a production station at the company's California plant.
Optimus, which was originally known as the Tesla Bot, was introduced in August 2021 during Tesla’s inaugural AI Day.
Tesla also unveiled a new computer chip at the event last year. The chip was designed entirely in-house and will be used in the company’s supercomputer, Dojo.
Mr Musk said existing humanoid robots are “missing a brain” — and the ability to solve problems on their own.
By contrast, he said, Optimus would be an “extremely capable robot” that Tesla would aim to produce in the millions. He said he expected they would cost less than $20,000 each.
Tesla is on a hiring spree for people to work on humanoid bipedal robots, with about 20 job postings on Tesla Bot, including jobs for designing parts such as actuators, Reuters reported.
“The code you will write will at term run in millions of humanoid robots across the world, and will therefore be held to high quality standards,” one of the job postings said.
What will Optimus look like and do?
The adult-sized robot is set to be about 173 centimetres tall and weigh about 57 kilograms. It will be programmed to do monotonous jobs such as assembling car parts, moving components around factories and picking up groceries.
Optimus will one day have “the potential to be more significant than the vehicle business over time”, Mr Musk has said.
It will be controlled by the same artificial intelligence systems that Tesla is developing for use in its electric vehicles.
In the future, “physical work will be a choice”, Mr Musk said. “Tesla is arguably the world’s biggest robotics company. Our cars are basically semi-sentient robots on wheels.”
Unlike in a host of movies, Mr Musk said the robot will be “friendly”, and is being built by humans for humans.
“At a mechanical level, you can run away from it — and most likely overpower it,” he said.
Technical imagery of the Optimus robot shows it with a screen for useful information within the head area. It will be made of lightweight materials, contain 40 electromechanical actuators and have “human-level” hands.
“There's still a lot of work to be done to refine Optimus and prove it,” Mr Musk said.
Musk highlights the risks of robots and AI …
In 2017, despite his own efforts to further the use of technology such as AI and robots, Mr Musk sounded a warning.
“I have access to the very most cutting-edge AI, and I think people should be really concerned about it,” he said. Mr Musk went on to say it is “the biggest risk we face as a civilisation”.
“AI is a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilisation, in a way that car accidents, aircraft crashes, faulty drugs, or bad food were not,” he said.
Optimus has its sceptics …
It does, yes, mainly because robots in general have trouble with unpredictable situations — much like self-driving cars.
“Self-driving cars weren't really proved to be as easy as anyone thought. And it's the same way with humanoid robots to some extent,” Shaun Azimi, the lead of Nasa's Dexterous Robotics Team, told Reuters.
“If something unexpected happens, being flexible and robust to those kinds of changes is very difficult.”
For Tesla to succeed, it needs to show robots doing many unscripted actions, said Nancy Cooke, a professor in human systems engineering at Arizona State University.
“If he just gets the robot to walk around, or he gets the robots to dance, that's already been done. That's not that impressive,” she said.
Henri Ben Amor, a robotics professor at Arizona State University, said Mr Musk's price target of $20,000 was a “good proposition” since current costs are about $100,000 for humanoid robots.
What else does Tesla have in the pipeline?
The company is also working on a vehicle known as the robotaxi, which is to be unveiled in next two years, with production expected to begin in 2024.
“It is going to be highly optimised for autonomy — meaning it will not have a steering wheel or pedals,” Mr Musk said.
“There are a number of other innovations around it that I think are quite exciting, but it is fundamentally optimised to achieve the lowest fully considered cost per mile or kilometre when counting everything.”
Then there is the Cybertruck — a futuristic, angular, armoured-looking vehicle that is scheduled to enter production next year, bringing an end to a nearly three-year wait for early pre-production order holders.
The Tesla Semi, a battery-powered lorry, was unveiled in 2017 and is due to go into production next year. Reservations can be made on the company website.
What is blockchain?
Blockchain is a form of distributed ledger technology, a digital system in which data is recorded across multiple places at the same time. Unlike traditional databases, DLTs have no central administrator or centralised data storage. They are transparent because the data is visible and, because they are automatically replicated and impossible to be tampered with, they are secure.
The main difference between blockchain and other forms of DLT is the way data is stored as ‘blocks’ – new transactions are added to the existing ‘chain’ of past transactions, hence the name ‘blockchain’. It is impossible to delete or modify information on the chain due to the replication of blocks across various locations.
Blockchain is mostly associated with cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Due to the inability to tamper with transactions, advocates say this makes the currency more secure and safer than traditional systems. It is maintained by a network of people referred to as ‘miners’, who receive rewards for solving complex mathematical equations that enable transactions to go through.
However, one of the major problems that has come to light has been the presence of illicit material buried in the Bitcoin blockchain, linking it to the dark web.
Other blockchain platforms can offer things like smart contracts, which are automatically implemented when specific conditions from all interested parties are reached, cutting the time involved and the risk of mistakes. Another use could be storing medical records, as patients can be confident their information cannot be changed. The technology can also be used in supply chains, voting and has the potential to used for storing property records.
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Tests: 1st Test Jan 5-9, Cape Town; 2nd Test Jan 13-17, Centurion; 3rd Test Jan 24-28, Johannesburg
ODIs: 1st ODI Feb 1, Durban; 2nd ODI Feb 4, Centurion; 3rd ODI Feb 7, Cape Town; 4th ODI Feb 10, Johannesburg; 5th ODI Feb 13, Port Elizabeth; 6th ODI Feb 16, Centurion
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GP3 qualifying, 10:15am
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Director: Ali Abbas Zafar
Starring: Salman Khan, Katrina Kaif, Sunil Grover
Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
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Abu Dhabi race card
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Saturday
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Torque: 400Nm at 1,750-4,000rpm
Transmission: 8-speed auto
Fuel consumption: 9.1L/100km
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Power: 218hp (Cooper and Aceman), 313hp (Countryman)
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Tearful appearance
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Legislative setbacks for the government have blown a new hole in the budgetary calculations at a time when the deficit is stubbornly large and the economy is struggling to grow.
She appeared with Keir Starmer on Thursday and the pair embraced, but he had failed to give her his backing as she cried a day earlier.
A spokesman said her upset demeanour was due to a personal matter.
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Where: NSC Olimpiyskiy Stadium, Kiev, Ukraine
When: Saturday, May 26, 10.45pm (UAE)
TV: Match on BeIN Sports
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Based: Riyadh
Offices: UAE, Vietnam and Germany
Founded: September, 2020
Number of employees: 70
Sector: FinTech, online payment solutions
Funding to date: $116m in two funding rounds
Investors: Checkout.com, Impact46, Vision Ventures, Wealth Well, Seedra, Khwarizmi, Hala Ventures, Nama Ventures and family offices
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Personal motto: Believe it and you can achieve it.
Will the pound fall to parity with the dollar?
The idea of pound parity now seems less far-fetched as the risk grows that Britain may split away from the European Union without a deal.
Rupert Harrison, a fund manager at BlackRock, sees the risk of it falling to trade level with the dollar on a no-deal Brexit. The view echoes Morgan Stanley’s recent forecast that the currency can plunge toward $1 (Dh3.67) on such an outcome. That isn’t the majority view yet – a Bloomberg survey this month estimated the pound will slide to $1.10 should the UK exit the bloc without an agreement.
New Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly said that Britain will leave the EU on the October 31 deadline with or without an agreement, fuelling concern the nation is headed for a disorderly departure and fanning pessimism toward the pound. Sterling has fallen more than 7 per cent in the past three months, the worst performance among major developed-market currencies.
“The pound is at a much lower level now but I still think a no-deal exit would lead to significant volatility and we could be testing parity on a really bad outcome,” said Mr Harrison, who manages more than $10 billion in assets at BlackRock. “We will see this game of chicken continue through August and that’s likely negative for sterling,” he said about the deadlocked Brexit talks.
The pound fell 0.8 per cent to $1.2033 on Friday, its weakest closing level since the 1980s, after a report on the second quarter showed the UK economy shrank for the first time in six years. The data means it is likely the Bank of England will cut interest rates, according to Mizuho Bank.
The BOE said in November that the currency could fall even below $1 in an analysis on possible worst-case Brexit scenarios. Options-based calculations showed around a 6.4 per cent chance of pound-dollar parity in the next one year, markedly higher than 0.2 per cent in early March when prospects of a no-deal outcome were seemingly off the table.
Bloomberg
