Musk Demonstrates Robot 'Optimus' Folding Clothes - Slow but Natural Movements
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On January 16th, local time, Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted a demonstration video on social media X showing the company's humanoid robot 'Optimus' folding clothes, which was quite impressive.
Tesla ultimately hopes that humanoid robots can assist in manufacturing cars, but they are not yet capable of doing so.
When the company first introduced 'Optimus,' it seemed like just another one of Musk's half-baked ideas, even using dancers disguised as robots for promotion at the time.
In 2022, Tesla's demonstration of the robot at the AI Day event was underwhelming. Back then, Tesla only had a single robot prototype that didn't look impressive at all. It could barely walk and couldn't even wave to the crowd.
However, at last year's Tesla 2023 Annual Shareholders Meeting, Tesla showcased several more advanced robot prototypes capable of performing practical and useful tasks. In September last year, Tesla announced that Optimus was undergoing end-to-end neural network training, enabling it to perform new tasks such as autonomous object classification.
Last month, Tesla introduced the second-generation Optimus, a more refined version of the humanoid robot.
Ultimately, Tesla envisions people using these robots at home for various tasks. Before that, the company plans to deploy them in manufacturing operations to handle repetitive or hazardous duties.
On Monday, Elon Musk shared a new video of the second-generation Optimus robot folding shirts, demonstrating impressive dexterity.
Milan Kovac, one of the lead engineers for the Optimus robot, stated that the robot will be capable of handling increasingly complex tasks. He explained that the project currently uses remote control to guide the robot through progressively challenging tasks. This serves two purposes: first, to verify if the current hardware can flexibly accomplish these tasks (as the software and AI can already handle most scenarios), and second, to collect training data for the end-to-end neural network, enabling the robot to perform tasks autonomously. In the demonstration video, a pile of Tesla 4680 batteries can be seen on the table next to the robot folding clothes. This suggests that Tesla is striving to have its Optimus robot perform more useful tasks for the company.
Tesla believes that by leveraging its AI technology from autonomous vehicle projects, along with its expertise in batteries and motors, the company can pioneer the creation of the first practical humanoid robot. Tesla also stated that its electric vehicles are essentially robots on wheels. Now, the company just needs to make them humanoid, enabling them to be trained to perform various tasks in place of humans.