Elon Musk's next mission is to replace humans doing boring and repetitive tasks with an upcoming humanoid robot – the Tesla Bot – after dominating the EV market and then becoming the world's richest person. Yes, you read that correctly. Musk recently announced the development of a Terminator-style humanoid robot, minus the destructive capabilities.
Elon Musk announced at the recent Tesla AI Day virtual event that his electric vehicle company Tesla is working on a bipedal, humanoid robot that will be able to perform boring, dangerous, and repetitive tasks for you. The robot, dubbed the Tesla Bot, will stand 5 feet 8 inches tall and weigh around 56 kilograms.
When it comes to technical details, the Tesla Bot is still a mystery. Elon Musk, on the other hand, revealed that the robot will have 40 electromechanical actuators. There will be 12 of these in each of the robot's arms, and two in each of the neck and torso.
Furthermore, Tesla Bot, like its autonomous electric vehicles, will navigate and perform tasks using a variety of advanced cameras and sensors. It will be equipped with eight cameras and a screen that will display important information. Additionally, it will use Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) system to enable autonomous functions, which is the same autonomous driving technology that Tesla cars use.
“Tesla is arguably the world’s biggest robotics company because cars are semi-sentient robots on wheels. It kind of makes sense to put that into a humanoid form,” Musk said in an online event.
He also stated that the Tesla Bot will have five-fingered hands, similar to humans, and will be built in such a way that “you can run away from it and most likely overpower it.” Now, I'm concerned about the "most likely" part because, after all, the Tesla Bot is essentially a robot, and any engineer can design it to be destructive, right? If that happens, I'm sure Elon Musk will be ready to defend humanity with his army of "friendly" Tesla Bots.
In terms of availability, Musk stated that the first Tesla Bot prototype will be unveiled in 2022. However, no date has been set for when the company will begin selling commercial humanoid robots for industrial or personal use.