Tesla is expected to employ a workforce of humanoid robots to carry out work at its car factories from next year.
Elon Musk said in an off-the-cuff remark on X that the electric car company will have “genuinely useful” humanoid robots in small numbers for use in its own factories in 2025 (via the BBC). In 2026, it will offer these robots out to other companies. That’s a slight delay on initial expectations, reports Electrek.
Tesla’s robot is called Optimus. It can roam freely on its own two legs and has an impressive range of motion in its arms and hands. In a video shared to X in January, Optimus was shown to be able to fold a t-shirt about as well as me (sloppily). Though this was mimicking a human’s action alongside the bot and not an autonomous action.
Bi-pedal locomotion has come on leaps and bounds over the years (quite literally in terms of Boston Dynamic’s bots). However, Optimus still doesn’t walk with a confident gait. Though compared to some of the early prototype models on display last year and in 2022 it has already received big improvements.
The Optimus bot will reportedly be handed the boring or repetitive tasks on the factory floor. As we know from Destiny’s Tower, all bots will effectively become in charge of sweeping the floors—except for the special ones that go around shooting rocket launchers at ever-increasing baddies. Could go either way.
Tesla isn’t the only company with a humanoid bot nor the only car manufacturer looking to utilise them in the workforce.
Bot firm Figure has teamed up with BMW to roll out its robot, Figure 01, into the German car firm’s factories. You can see this bot in action in this video from Figure. In which its bots are seen working entirely autonomously and placing things within 3 cm of where they’re supposed to be. That’s decent for an autonomous machine with new-fangled motorised limbs though if my car door was off by 3 cm I’d probably want my money back. That’s why the robot has learned to correct itself, through ChatGPT creator OpenAI’s tech—and a human probably checks this stuff, right?
Figure has reportedly received significant funding from Nvidia, Jeff Bezos, and OpenAI—there’s a lot of money flying around in the factory bot industry. Probably enough to pay many humans many times over to just do the same work, but there we go.
The car industry has always been big on improving productivity through machines, automation, and robots. Yet it’s how these robots will transfer into our daily lives that will be most exciting. Like, for instance, babysitting your kids. Yeah, that’s right, your kids (not mine, I don’t have any). Musk reckons Optimus could be used for all sorts of things, like being your steely-bodied companion or taking care of your kids when you’re not home.
Any families wanna sign up to be beta testers? No?