Tesla CEO Friday September 30th Elon Musk presented his humanoid robot “Optimus“, Advertised on the occasion of the“ AI Day ”event of the electric vehicle manufacturer. Musk stated that the robot business will be worth more than its cars and hopes to expand Tesla beyond an electric vehicle manufacturer.
At the fair, the Tesla Bot was able to perform a number of tasksamong which water the plants, dance And move metal bars in the car manufacturer’s factory. Unlike other specialized robots that have been widely used in many industries, such as industrial robotic arms, cleaning robots, and social robots, Optimus’ only differentiation is that it has been designed for general purposes, which means it can perform a lot of tasks. Optimus aims to integrate the functions of various specialized robots to enable multi-functionality.
Is the new Westworld coming?
Service robots, a popular topic for many years, refer to those robots that can perform tasks and serve people. Due to labor shortages and falling hardware costs, the use of robots to serve people has gained significant momentum over the past decade. Musk revealed that his robot Optimus will cost less than $ 20,000 and Tesla aims to achieve the mass production within three to five years. The core value of service robots is to provide services and increase work efficiency. At this stage, most service robots have specific use cases, with some applications more developed than others.
For example, social robots are only designed to interact and communicate with people, while mobile robots (e.g. autonomous mobile robots) are only used for logistics and deliveries. The IDTechEx report “Service Robots 2022-2032: Technologies, actors and markets”Outlines a series of applications of service robots and provides a granular analysis of the market size of different applications and regional markets for the next decade.
Unlike the imaginative conceptual design image shown at “AI Day 2021”, the real prototype presented at “AI Day 2022” indicates that the product is still in its formative phase, with all the deconstructed components exposed directly to the public. Although the “naked” robot is not yet visually appealing, it is already able to carry out some daily activities without problems.
According to Musk, the prototype is the first robot ever able to work wirelessly, remote control and external power supply. Its operation is based exclusively on the integration of artificial intelligence algorithms, electric drive and battery. Tesla has already distributed several prototypes to its factories for testing purposes so far.
The technical details of Optimus
As for the technical details, according to the information revealed, Optimus is equipped with a 2.3 kWh battery and WiFi connectivity and LTE. So far the robot weighs about 72 kg. The 2.3 kWh battery is enough to allow Optimus to carry out activities for a whole day. The energy consumption of the robot is 100W when stationary and 500W when walking. The robot is based on the “Biologically Inspired Design”, in order to have greater dexterity.
The demonstration focused on Optimus’ joints, such as the hands, wrists and knees, showing how the data for each joint is processed. Optimus has 6 actuators and 11 degrees of freedom (DoF) in the hands. There are also sensors on the fingertips, which allow Optimus to have sensory feedback when he grabs objects directly.
As for the software, Optimus uses Tesla’s full autonomous driving system (FSD) for object recognition and classification. In essence, Optimus is like an autonomous car that moves with two legs instead of four wheels.
With Tesla’s entry, IDTechEx believes the service robot market will expand further. IDTechEx believes that the service robot market will exceed $ 70 billion by 2032with an increase of 4.7 times compared to the current market (2022).
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