Elon Musk has confirmed that Tesla expects to launch its humanoid robot in 2022.
The entrepreneur shared the news at its Tesla Live event, where he revealed that the robot could be deployed in a number of situations to do “boring, repetitious, and dangerous” activities, freeing up humans for other duties.
Tesla Bot comes in at 5 foot 8 inches tall, and weighs 125 lbs, and could handle anything from picking up groceries in retail stores, through to attaching bots to cars using a wrench – unlocking a near unlimited number of opportunities for businesses looking to automate their processes and reduce their reliance on human labor.
The Tesla Bot would come with a screen with a human face, which could provide ‘useful information’ to users.
Musk said that the new Tesla Bot would run on the same technology as the latest Tesla cars, and it would navigate using eight cameras, built-in to the robot. He acknowledged that the introduction of robots could have a “profound implication” on the economy, but said that the current labor shortage proved a need for the technology.
Fighting off criticism from journalists who fear that the robot is bad for society, Elon said, “In the long term I do think there needs to be universal basic income. But not right now because the robot doesn’t work.”
Speaking at the event, Elon Musk said: “Basically, if you think about what we’re doing right now with cars, Tesla is arguably the world’s biggest robotics company because our cars are like semi-sentient robots on wheels.
“With the Full Self-Driving computer, [ … ] which will keep evolving, and Dojo and all the neural nets recognizing the world, understanding how to navigate through the world, it kind of makes sense to put that on to a humanoid form.”
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