Tesla is planning to have “thousands of Humanoid Robots within its factories,” according to a new job listing for the Tesla Bot program.
Humanoid Robots
With science fiction promising us flying cars and robot butlers for decades, people aren’t taking tech companies announcing humanoid robots seriously.
When Elon Musk brought a dancer in a robot costume to the stage in order to announce the Tesla Bot program at Tesla AI Day last year, it didn’t help people to take it seriously; many saw it as a joke and didn’t believe that Tesla was serious in developing a humanoid robot.
However, Musk made it clear that the humanoid robot program has become a priority at Tesla.
During a product roadmap update early in 2022, Musk said that Tesla is prioritizing product development of the Optimus humanoid robot in 2022 over new product launches, which were all delayed until 2023.
On several occasions since then, Musk has said that people don’t appreciate the value that Tesla Bot could bring to the world. He even said that it could completely change world economics.
But Tesla doesn’t even need customers for the Optimus robot to prove its worth; the automaker plans to be its own best customers by putting the robots to work in its factories.
Tesla Bot
In a job listing for “Motion Planning & Navigation, Tesla Bot,” Tesla writes that it plans to use “thousands of Humanoid Robots within its factories”:
Tesla is on a path to build humanoid bi-pedal robots at scale to automate repetitive and boring tasks. Core to the Tesla Bot, the motion planning stack presents a unique opportunity to work on state-of-the-art algorithms for motion planning and navigation culminating in their deployment to real world production applications. Our motion planning software engineers develop and own this stack from inception to deployment. Most importantly, you will see your work repeatedly shipped to and utilized by thousands of Humanoid Robots within our factories.
The company said that the first version of Tesla Bot will be focused on completing simple repetitive tasks, which will make the robot useful in a factory setting.
Tesla is set to unveil the first working prototype of its humanoid robot at AI Day on September 30.
Electrek’s Take
If Tesla can successfully create a humanoid robot that is useful, the benefits are obvious, especially amid the current labor shortage.
But that’s the question: how advanced is the robot going to be?
We know that Tesla has been putting a lot of resources into AI, and it has made great advancements in computer vision, which are going to be useful for the robot, too.
However, there is also going to be a need for advancements in robotics to truly make the robot useful. Has Tesla achieved that? We don’t know yet, but we will know soon.