Tesla CEO Elon Musk is always looking for new ways to surprise the world. And his latest creation is the Tesla Robot, also known as the Optimus robot.
Elon Musk said that by using Tesla’s expertise in both software and hardware they could revolutionize the robotics industry. Manufacturing a humanoid robot that is both practical and affordable at very high volume (millions of units) and as soon as possible – is the goal of the Tesla Bot team.
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First Prototype
Given it has only been twelve months since the first Tesla AI day event and the announcement of the Tesla Bot, no one really expected the Tesla team to present much of substance at the event.
And given that the announcement was almost a joke, with just a person in a robot suit, expectations were never high. Instead, we were all surprised that Musk’s robotics team presented not one but two models at the event. It was a little mind-blowing!
The first was a working prototype that could walk and move with 11 degrees of freedom in the hands. That meant they had taught it to handle simple tasks including watering plants.
The first version of the Tesla bot was made with off-the-shelf components and was relatively fast to build and teach. Although at the live demo it only danced and moved and did not show any specific tasks.
Second Prototype
Of course, that is not enough for the fast-moving Tesla engineers. Musk has pushed them to produce a second prototype of a humanoid robot that was made from cutting-edge in-house components.
This second robot was also presented on AI Day 2. It was not as task ready as the first, but was already able to move and should soon be able to walk.
Optimus Hardware
In many ways, the hardware is the easy part for Tesla. They have electric motor, battery and manufacturing expertise already. So, putting their engineering teams to work on a robot was quite easy.
They developed the Optimus robot from scratch including the battery pack, their own actuators, the joints and all other surrounding materials.
Tesla Bot Actuators
Tesla engineers designed 6 actuators for the tesla RObot. Three linear actuators and three rotary actuators. They optimized all of them to be able to work in various parts of the robot, rather than making dozens of different actuators in total.
This enables them to mass produce the robot more cheaply and easily in the long run.
Battery Pack & Life
The Tesla robotics team has designed the Tesla bot to be able to run for a full day. It uses a 52 Volt system with a battery pack of 2.3kWh. This may seem small when compared to the large 75kWh+ packs in Tesla vehicles. However, the bot will be very efficient and not need to move as much weight or distance as a car.
Optimus Software
One of the biggest challenges of the Optimus robot is the software. Sure, you can make a robot move and even program it to do specific things. But, that is not the Tesla bot goal.
Instead, Elon Musk wants his team to use the in-house artificial intelligence expertise they have developed for their full self-driving cars. So, they took this base software and ported it to the robot.
The end result was a very quick ability to navigate and move about an environment almost autonomously. The Optimus robot has even been trained using their AI algorithms to do specific tasks including walking, watering plants and manipulating objects.
The further goals of the team are to teach the second prototype to walk and then use it for simple tasks to do factory work for Tesla.
When Will the Tesla Bot Be Released?
There is no fixed release date for the first Tesla robot. However, Tesla engineers are aiming to test the robot with some tasks within their factory next year.
Hopefully, from there, they will be able to build and sell a version to the public.
How much does Tesla’s robot cost?
Given that the Tesla bot is not available right now, there is no price estimate as of today. However, Elon Musk has stated that they aim to produce the robot for less than the cost of a car. Probably around $20,000
What is the purpose of the Tesla Robot?
The tesla Robot will be designed to accomplish any task that a human being can do. As such, the goal of the humanoid robot is to provide cheap labor to businesses. and help humanity to prosper.
