Elon Musk says Tesla will produce millions of robots
SAN FRANCISCO - Tesla CEO Elon Musk showed off a prototype of the humanoid robot Optimus on Friday, and predicted that the electric vehicle maker would be able to produce millions of them and sell them for under $20,000 -- less than a third of the price of a Model Y.
Musk said there was still a lot of work to be done to refine Optimus and prove it at the Tesla office in Palo Alto, California, where the robot was showcased.
A prototype model that Tesla said was developed in February walked out to wave at the crowd on Friday, and Tesla showed a video of it doing simple tasks such as watering plants, carrying boxes and lifting metal bars at a production station at the company's California plant.
Musk said he hoped that the team would be able to walk itself soon after the launch of the more streamlined current generation bot on a cart.
He said existing humanoid robots lack a brain and the ability to solve problems on their own. He said that Optimus would be an extremely capable robot that Tesla would aim to produce in the millions.
He said he expected it to cost less than US $20,000.
Musk and Tesla representatives acknowledged that there was a lot of work to achieve the goal of a mass-produced, low-cost robot using Tesla-designed technology that would be capable of replacing humans at work.
Other automakers, including Toyota and Honda, have developed humanoid robot prototypes capable of doing complicated things like shooting a basketball, and production robots from ABB and others are a mainstay of auto manufacturing.
Tesla is not alone in pushing the market opportunity for a mass-market robot that could be used in factory work.
Tesla's bot will use Tesla-designed components, including a 2.3 kWh battery pack carried in its torso, a chip system and actuators to drive its limbs. The robot is designed to weigh 73 kg.
It wasn't quite ready to walk. Musk said that it's going to walk a long way in a few weeks.
Musk described the event as intended to recruit workers, and the engineers on stage catered to a technical audience. They described the process by which Tesla designed robot hands and used crash simulator technology to test the robot's ability to fall on its face without breaking.
Musk said that he believed that Tesla shareholders had a role in vetting the company's efforts because it believed that the mass roll-out of robots had the potential to transform civilisation and create a future of no poverty.
If you go crazy, you can fire me, Musk said.