At Tesla's first AI Day event in 2021, when Elon Musk first unveiled his idea of a humanoid robot Tesla Bot, many people may think it was just a joke - he had a dancer dress up as a robot dancing on stage, stating that it would be Tesla's most important product in 2022.
A year later, on the second Tesla AI Day, a prototype of Tesla's bipedal humanoid robot Optimus (Optimus Prime) was officially unveiled. Optimus Prime made its debut on stage and waved to the crowd, while Tesla also showcased a video of him moving boxes and watering plants while moving metal rods in a car factory.
Image source: Tesla official website
Musk emphasized that Optimus Prime was the first humanoid robot without external stability assistance, remote control, or external power supply, completely powered by AI algorithms, its own battery control, and highly integrated electric drive actuators.
Over the years, "engineer" Musk has planted many "technological items" - from electric cars, autonomous driving to brain computer interfaces, from Earth to Mars... and in the past year or two, he has been pushing humanoid robots. Musk wants humanoid robots to work on car production lines.
As the industry with the highest level of automation in the world, the automation process in automotive factories began half a century ago, and Tesla's automotive production lines are currently the most advanced and automated in the world. However, for a long time, the production workshops of automobiles have often been filled with large and bulky industrial robots, and in order to ensure safety, these robots are isolated from human employees. Until now, there has been no application of humanoid robots in automobile factories.
At present, humanity is in a transitional period from the information age to the artificial intelligence era. If the consumption and popularization of smartphones have accelerated the golden development of the information age, what will be the next technology hardware race or phenomenon level category that will lead humanity from the information age to the intelligent age?
Will humanoid robots be one of them?
The AI Black Technology Behind Optimus Prime
The Tesla team stated that Optimus Prime's design is based on the human body and hopes that its behavior will be as close as possible to human behavior.
According to the published parameters, the "Optimus Prime" is 172CM tall, weighs 57 kilograms, has a maximum speed of 5.8 miles per hour (approximately 9.33 kilometers per hour), and can lift up to 45 pounds (approximately 20.41 kilograms) of items. Musk stated that this is their most important product development project for 2022, which may even be more important than the automotive business. According to Musk, cars with intelligent driving functions are like "semi intelligent robots with wheels".
It is reported that Tesla's most advanced AI technology is utilized, among which Optimus Prime is equipped with the same intelligent driving camera on its head as Tesla Motors, and its computing power is supported by its Full Self driving (FSD) chip. It shares the AI system with the car and utilizes the training machine of the Dojo supercomputer
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