{"id":1648178,"date":"2022-09-20T06:50:43","date_gmt":"2022-09-20T10:50:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1648178"},"modified":"2022-09-20T06:50:53","modified_gmt":"2022-09-20T10:50:53","slug":"elon-musk-faces-skeptics-as-tesla-gets-ready-to-unveil-optimus-robot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/elon-musk-faces-skeptics-as-tesla-gets-ready-to-unveil-optimus-robot\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk faces skeptics as Tesla gets ready to unveil \u2018Optimus\u2019 robot"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Felon-musk-faces-skeptics-as-tesla-gets-ready-to-unveil-optimus-robot%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1648178&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>By Hyunjoo Jin<\/p>\n<p>SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) \u2013     Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk blamed overreliance on factory robots for sending the electric carmaker to \u201cproduction hell\u201d four years ago, saying humans were better at certain jobs.<\/p>\n<p>My, how times have changed.<\/p>\n<p>Musk\u2019s Texas company now is floating ambitious plans to deploy thousands of humanoid robots, known as Tesla Bot or Optimus, within its factories, expanding eventually to millions around the world, according to job postings. Buzz is building within the company as Tesla is having more internal meetings on robots, a person familiar with the matter said.<\/p>\n<p>Longer term, Musk said at a TED Talk robots could be used in homes, making dinner, mowing the lawn and caring for the elderly people, and even becoming a \u201cbuddy\u201d or a \u201ccatgirl\u201d sex partner.<\/p>\n<p>The robot business eventually may be worth more than Tesla\u2019s car revenue, according to Musk, who is now touting a vision for the company that goes well beyond making self-driving electric vehicles.<\/p>\n<p>At its \u201cAI Day\u201d on Sept. 30, Musk said Tesla will unveil a prototype from its project Optimus, an allusion to the powerful and benevolent leader of the Autobots in the Transformers series. Production could start next year, he said.<\/p>\n<p>Tesla faces skepticism that it can show technological advances that would justify the expense of \u201cgeneral purpose\u201d robots in factories, homes and elsewhere, according to robotics experts, investors and analysts interviewed by Reuters.<\/p>\n<p>Tesla already employs hundreds of robots designed for specific jobs for production of its cars.<\/p>\n<p>Humanoid robots have been in development for decades by Honda Motor Co and Hyundai Motor Co\u2019s Boston Dynamics unit. Like self-driving cars, the robots have trouble with unpredictable situations.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSelf-driving cars weren\u2019t really proved to be as easy as anyone thought. And it\u2019s the same way with humanoid robots to some extent,\u201d the lead of NASA\u2019s Dexterous Robotics Team, Shaun Azimi, told Reuters.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf something unexpected happens, being flexible and robust to those kinds of changes is very difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>At an \u201cAutonomy\u201d event in 2019, Musk promised 1 million robotaxis by 2020 but has yet to deliver such a car.<\/p>\n<p>Musk\u2019s robots may be able to demonstrate basic capabilities at the event, but it would be hard for them to impress public expectations of robots that are as capable as humans, experts say. <\/p>\n<p>To succeed, Tesla will need to show robots doing multiple, unscripted actions, said Nancy Cooke, a professor in human systems engineering at Arizona State University. Such proof could provide a boost to Tesla stock, which is down 25% from its 2021 peak.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf he just gets the robot to walk around, or he gets the robots to dance, that\u2019s already been done. That\u2019s not that impressive,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Tesla did not respond to Reuters\u2019 request for comments, but Musk in the past proved skeptics wrong, jump-starting the electric car market and building a rocket company, SpaceX, although some product launches were behind schedule. <\/p>\n<p>IN-HOUSE EXPERTISE<\/p>\n<p>Initially, Optimus will perform boring or dangerous jobs, including moving parts around its factories, according to Musk.<\/p>\n<p>Musk acknowledged that humanoid robots do not have enough intelligence to navigate the real world without being explicitly instructed.<\/p>\n<p>But he said Tesla can leverage its expertise in AI and key components to develop and produce smart, yet less expensive, humanoid robots at scale.<\/p>\n<p>Tesla is on hiring spree for people to work on humanoid bi-pedal robots, with about 20 job postings on \u201cTesla Bot\u201d including jobs for designing key robot parts like \u201cactuators\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe 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,\u201d one of the job postings said.<\/p>\n<p>Tesla has over 2 million vehicles on the road. <\/p>\n<p>Jonathan Hurst, chief technology officer at Agility Robotics, a humanoid robot firm founded in 2015 said the technology \u201cis right now starting to turn the corner.\u201d  <\/p>\n<p>\u201cCertainly, an important measure of success is do they make money from it,\u201d he told Reuters, referring to Tesla\u2019s humanoid robot efforts.<\/p>\n<p>HUMAN HELP?<\/p>\n<p>Analysts see more pageant than product. \u201cIt\u2019s all part of distracting people and giving them the next shiny object to chase after,\u201d Guidehouse Insights analyst Sam Abuelsamid said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cInvestors are not excited about Optimus,\u201d said Gene Munster, managing partner at venture capital firm Loup Ventures, which holds Tesla stocks.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s just such a low probability that it works at scale,\u201d he said, saying it is \u201cinfinitely harder than self-driving cars.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>And then there is Musk\u2019s own experience with robots in the factory.<\/p>\n<p>During the 2018 production hell, Musk specifically noted the problems of the \u201cfluff bot,\u201d an assembly robot that failed to perform simple tasks that human hands can do \u2013 picking up pieces of \u201cfluff\u201d and placing them on batteries.<\/p>\n<p>He said the cost of having technicians maintain the complicated robot far exceeded that of hiring someone to do the assembly.<\/p>\n<p>The fluff bot is \u201ca funny example but drives home the point that autonomy often doesn\u2019t generalize well, and so handling soft fluffy material that isn\u2019t as predictable as a rigid part was causing a huge problem,\u201d Aaron Johnson, a mechanical engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University, said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHuman hands are way better at doing that,\u201d Musk said.<\/p>\n<p> (Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Peter Henderson, Ben Klayman and Lisa Shumaker)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Hyunjoo Jin SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) \u2013 Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk blamed overreliance on factory robots for sending the electric carmaker to \u201cproduction hell\u201d four years ago, saying humans<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1648178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1648178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1648178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1648178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1648178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1648178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1648178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}