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Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

electrek.co

221–230 of 416 posts

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#221
I haven’t seen a single substantive comment in this entire thread. Way too much emotion.

Why would he announce this robot if it’s real? If his intention was to turn this into a real product, what purpose is there to announcing it before he’s started?

Even if he were just lying to generate hype, wouldn’t it make more sense to make a prototype and show short clips of its parts moving and actuating? There doesn’t seem to be any scenario where the announcement alone has any justification. Especially when he’s being criticized all the time for these announcements.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no Musk fan but this > If he had never pursued reusability he would have made far, far more money from his launch business. Strikes me as short term thinking and not true, also. The plan is to sell tickets at $400,000 each to get to Mars. There doesn't seem to be any way to achieve that without reusability. The money to be made from founding the first Mars colony supplied with reusable rockets completely dwarfs s…

First, no one denies that reusability is still not profitable. This includes Musk himself and heads of all the other rocket companies who have all made it clear they aren't pursing it because these is simply no business case for it. At best maybe recovering the fairings or engines could be profitable for now. > The plan is to sell tickets at $400,000 each to get to Mars. His Starship is set to hold 40 people on the t…

With reusability he can get down to as low as 2mil per launch. So even with 8 launches for refuelling, this is the correct ballpark.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#223
post #66

It is interesting that many of the top comments are as dismissive as: “No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame,” When you look at Tesla’s talent in: AI + motors + batteries + manufacturing I can’t believe how negative and dismissive the comments are. Can we not have some appreciation for what Tesla HAS achieved vs only focusing on missed ship dates? The part that I think is going over peoples head is that for so m…

I don't dismiss Tesla's successes at all, but they are primarily repackaging and improving technologies that already exist. They didn't need to invent the lithium-ion battery, or the electric motor, or the automobile; all of those things already existed and were available to be adapted to Tesla's desired use. Humanoid robots, however, are a much harder problem than building a mass-market-ready electric car. In order…

Having Rosie the robot maid from the Jetsons at home is the vision of the future being sold, but as you point out, that level of technology is very much still the realm of science fiction. If you're watching the other parts of the AI conference this was presented at, self-driving cars are practically here. The reality, of course, is that that actually aren't yet. But you can buy a Tesla today to get an electric car taste of that future, even though it's not actually quite here.

A bipedal furniture dolly, however, is as unsexy as it is possible, using today's technology. It requires none of the impossible breakthroughs, though energy storage seems like it would be a problem. (Quad-copter drones seem to have follow as a control scheme figured out already.)

Doing this under Tesla means the earliest versions don't need to sell at all, they just need to be useful internally. Which I'm sure is why this is coming up in the first place. Think of all the places a forklift can go in a factory vs a human. The forklift is extremely useful, but still limited to flat, paved terrain. A bipedal robot base solves that, enabling Tesla to make more use of available space.

If this bot follows Tesla's strategy for self-driving (which still isn't here), it'll ship with "all the necessary hardware for Rosie the robot maid-mode", and then consumers will have to wait another couple decades for the software to actually catch up.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#224
post #132

Reveals it with a person in a suit dancing to dubstep: https://twitter.com/TESLAcharts/status/1428540624203128837?s...

I said this in another comment, but how do they get away with it? People are in this very thread making serious comments like Tesla has even a thread of a chance of actually doing this… I’d love it if Boston Dynamics recreates this dance with Atlas.

Risky, but maybe it would even be good PR to try to match the dance and see the robot fall over just to point out how far they actually have come in 30 years.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#225
post #130
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I’ve seen FSD makes minor mistakes that at high speeds lead to danger or death. I can’t see a minor mistake in folding laundry leading to the laundry being shredded. Musk said the robots would not be strong (only can lift 5lbs). So unless the robot picked up scissors it couldn’t shred the laundry. Unless I’m missing something?

FSD has not been rolled out yet, so you’re attributing to FSD some errors that are actually made by humans. Yeah maybe these humans were confused by marketing to think it was FSD, just as you think it was FSD, but that doesn’t make it FSD.

Tesla is quite literally selling a package called "Full Self-Driving". I don't see how it has not been "rolled out yet" unless you're confusing Tesla's bullshit marketing lingo for level 5 autonomous driving.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel people said the same thing about him for SpaceX and Tesla back when he was just the wacky PayPal guy. Remember SpaceX's first launch was in 2006 (before the iPhone existed!) and it's only started getting really serious traction in the past 5 years. Elon's no stranger to things that don't have any "useful form" for well over a decade. I'm quite certain he's aware of the realistic timelines, and he sells a diffe…

I like Musk, and I've been following his progress since 2011. I always thought he seemed very intelligent and seemed to really understand what he was doing. However I have to agree with the person you are replying to. There has been the sort of myth going around that making rockets is hard. It used to be hard... 50 years ago. That is literally the technology Musk has been using for the last 20 years: 50 year old tech…

SpaceX created the only full flow engine in history that was actually used in a flight. And they are well on track on the first fully rapid reusable rocket twice as powerful as the Saturn 5.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you even watched the announcement? Has anyone commenting here did? He clearly said the bot v1 won't do more than carrying simple things and will be super slow and weak. It will only have very basic grasping hands, even likely with 3 fingers. It will be what grasshopper was to Falcon 9. And about autonomous driving, Tesla autopilot seems to be almost as good as Waymo, except with pure vision. And I'd bet a great…

which, anyone naysaying bot v1 doesn't see it. Think about moving a dishwasher. Up and down stairs, over and across pathways which are just a little too narrow for the furniture dolly so it keeps riding into the dirt. The target market for v1 is going to be slim, because I bet it won't be cheap. But it will be endlessly useful, and doesn't need to solve really hard general AI grade robotics problems, just some comput…

Just based on novelty factor and number of millionaires in the world if it's 50-80K they prob can sell more than they can make

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no Musk fan but this > If he had never pursued reusability he would have made far, far more money from his launch business. Strikes me as short term thinking and not true, also. The plan is to sell tickets at $400,000 each to get to Mars. There doesn't seem to be any way to achieve that without reusability. The money to be made from founding the first Mars colony supplied with reusable rockets completely dwarfs s…

That ticket price is very, very optimistic. With it's 1200 t of fuel, the starship eats 240 t of methane and 960 t of oxygen. The price for methane is around 80 cents per litre, 240 t is 520 m^3 ish, so thats $420 000. Oxygen on the other hand seems to cost $10.6/kg, giving you a number of $12 000 000. Rounds out to 12 million per a single fueling. If the Starship carries 40 people that's just enough to bring the fue…

Generating liquid oxygen is two orders of magnitude cheaper, making it way cheaper than methane.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#230

Musk seems to have fallen for the idea that since he's had great success in one or two areas, he can easily repeat that success in other areas, even if the difficulty is much higher and entirely different skills are required. SpaceX and Tesla are great achievements, but they are primarily stories of successfully implementing and improving existing technologies with innovative engineering and business practices (like…

Right. I mean how many years has Boston Dynamics been cranking at 'teaching' a robot how to walk like a human, and it's still a work in progress? But of course Musk is going to bust it out in the next 16 months at most. Just like FSD, "this year", "this year really", "this time we promise we mean this year", "this year, seriously folks".

Boston Dynamics has made some pretty incredible progress. The very first videos had Atlas and Spot "walking" but really more like controlled tripping. It was cool and impressive, but definitely in line with my idea of what was possible in robotics. The most recent video has Atlas doing parkour. It's skin crawling. It looks fake. It can jump and flip better than I ever could. It is suddenly out of step with what I ever thought a robot would do.

Conventionally, I would agree that this sounds like an insane overreach from Musk, but it feels like the ground is shifting under my feet and the previously preposterous is becoming suddenly possibly with increasing frequency.

Anyway, better that it gets me my groceries than hunts me down through the forest.

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