Tesla CEO Elon Musk has indicated that the company is working on the development of a humanoid robot that will be codenamed Optimus.
According to his words, a prototype will be available “sometime next year”, and to create it Tesla will take advantage of the experience gained with automated machinery in its factories, but also with some of the hardware and software that allow its Autopilot system to work.
The robot will be intended for tasks “that are unsafe, repetitive or boring,” they explain on Tesla’s official website dedicated to the field of artificial intelligence. There, by the way, they call the robot “Tesla Bot”, just like that.
The Tesla Bot 🤯🤯🤯 @elonmusk https://t.co/dAFXkOVKIe
— Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) August 20, 2021
The company is looking for professionals in the sector to “leverage our expertise in artificial intelligence beyond our fleet of vehicles”.
Elon Musk took advantage of the Tesla AI Day event for the presentation of this project, and commented that “we almost have all the parts needed for humanoid robots, as we already make robots with wheels”.
This new project is especially curious even when talking about Musk because the creator of Tesla and SpaceX has been warning for years about the danger of advances in artificial intelligence.
In the past, he has already commented on how there is a threat that could turn humans into pets, something that could be part of the reason why he also launched the Neuralink project.
A priori it seems that this Tesla Bot will be similar in format and features to the Boston Dynamics Atlas that recently surprised us doing parkour, but we will have to wait for this prototype to see if both projects are similar.
