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Tesla Optimus Bots Were Remotely Operated at Cybercab Event

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Re: Tesla Optimus Bots Were Remotely Operated at Cybercab Event

#181

Post by Animats »

robomartin wrote: post #172
matco11 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Also, especially in the extremely crowded and noisy context - what would have been the chances to have the demo working so well? In fact, even if the robots worked very well autonomously, you would still have wanted a way to ensure that the demo is successful - the same way Steve Jobs did with the iPhone demo, Larry Ellison did with the Oracle servers demo, etc. So many stories like that in the history of fa…

> these are all AI issues (as opposed to mechanical ones) Actuation is still a massive problem in humanoid robotics. We have over 650 muscles. A humanoid today can't even approximate that. Sure, a robot might not need that many actuators to be extremely useful. However, to be general enough to be able to interact with any human environment, the number of required actuators will not be trivial. Add to that gearing, co…

The big breakthroughs have already happened.

- Small, powerful 3-phase servomotors are cheap and easy to obtain. Mass production of drone motors has advanced small motor technology considerably. Tiny motors use to be either toy-grade junk or expensive Swiss precision. That's improved.

- Motors with built-in encoders are, at last, available. Encoders used to be fragile plastic boxes stuck on the end of the motor. Also, thermal sensing inside the motor is common, so you can tell if you're overheating it.

- Permanent magnets are small and powerful, and have such high coercitivity that you don't have to worry about demagnetizing them if you over-drive the motor. The main limit on motor power is cooling. You can way overdrive a motor momentarily, like muscles.

- Motor controllers are now small and cheap, They cost about $1000 per motor two decades ago. The power semiconductors are small. Controllers can be programmed to use very high power levels briefly, monitoring thermal sensors.

It would be nice to have good linear actuators. Linear motors do exist, but never really became a big thing.

Re: Tesla Optimus Bots Were Remotely Operated at Cybercab Event

#182

Post by FactKnower69 »

beeflet wrote: post #87
modeless wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Each robot had several human escorts, and the robots were limited to slow walking and a few slow hand gestures. The only danger would be if one fell over. 1x NEO looks awesome and far more advanced than this version of Optimus. I'm bullish on 1x. Tesla has a manufacturing advantage though. There were 50 units of Optimus at the event and I expect that there are only a few fully working units of NEO made so far. Also,…

>Each robot had several human escorts, and the robots were limited to slow walking and a few slow hand gestures. More importantly, the robots were limited to doing no real work. They just feebly pick up objects and place them somewhere else, which I am pretty sure doesn't require AI. For example, the vid shows the robot pouring hot water into a glass with a massive funnel strapped to it. Why not have the robot fill t…

>It also irks me how the robots are just humanoids. Like for example, why have a head with two eyes.

the risk-averse, cowardly, snivelling product design is really one of the most odious things about the whole Tesla shitshow. they had the opportunity to completely redesign the automobile from scratch, but chose to meekly clone the exact same bog standard sedan design everyone else converged on 50 years ago, clinging to some form response about safety despite the front of a Tesla crumpling like paper in any collision anyway

Re: Tesla Optimus Bots Were Remotely Operated at Cybercab Event

#183

Post by nomel »

schainks wrote: post #173

Am I missing something or was the point for those robots to be human controlled? Tesla is trying to have disposable body parts that are remotely controlled so their workers get hurt less often due to RSI or other assembly line accidents. It’s not like they’ll fix their safety culture if the occasional robot destruction keeps volume up and injuries down.

Reference? Them being eventually autonomous has been covered in the events and his talks about the eventual AI that will drive them.

Re: Tesla Optimus Bots Were Remotely Operated at Cybercab Event

#184

Post by robotresearcher »

jjk166 wrote: post #116
robotresearcher wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also a roboticist. Perception and funding are hard. But don't forget battery energy density, and the power-to-weight ratio and energy efficiency of actuators. Also very very hard, and Moore's law helps not at all. Autonomous cars are in a nice niche since they store vast energy for actuation anyway, it's OK to be heavy, and the controls are relatively simple. They are limited by perception and decision making. Hu…

Battery density is only an issue if these things are spending most of their time moving long distances. If you are targeting a drop in replacement for a human worker who is spending most of their time at a workstation, it can be plugged in while working. Even in a scenario where the robot can not be connected to power while working, that's easily solved with redundancy - get two robots, one works while the other char…

> easily solved with redundancy - get two robots.

Yay, twice as expensive.

And power tethers on robots suck so hard. Try it sometime, you’ll hate it.

Re: Tesla Optimus Bots Were Remotely Operated at Cybercab Event

#185

Post by nomel »

resters wrote: post #127
lefrenchy wrote: post #112

It’s so funny to me when people still believe Elon when it comes to this or deadlines. I used to work for him and he always overpromises Friendly reminder that in 2017 he was saying a car would drive autonomously from LA to NY in a year. It is now 2024 and that has not happened. Friendly reminder that Tesla Semis are still not fully delivered and running. Friendly reminder that the Roadster 2 is not rolling off the p…

It's perplexing because Elon is effective at fundraising and pursuing challenging and ambitious goals. However now Tesla cars are protected by a 100% tariff on competitors, and Elon is campaigning for Trump who is now promising 200% tariffs on imported goods. The gigapress sounded like a good idea when I first heard about it bc it could reduce manufacturing costs, yet Tesla does not seem to have realized any signific…

You’re simplifying things a bit here. The tariffs are to protect all US car manufacturers (who all have EV directives) from BYD, who was strategically subsidized by the government to crush EV companies, including Tesla [1]. Tesla would be able to compete much easier if we were to throw out the environmental regulations and better utilize slave labor [2].

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-10/byd-got-3...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/20/business/economy/forced-l...

Re: Tesla Optimus Bots Were Remotely Operated at Cybercab Event

#187

Post by cdchn »

Animats wrote: post #95

That was obvious to anyone with any experience with real-world robots. Nice piece of machinery, though. Boston Dynamics' humanoids were clunky electrohydraulic mechanisms borrowed from their horse-type robots. All-electric is now possible and much simpler. Schatft was the first to get this working, and they had to liquid-cool the motors. Don't know if Tesla has to liquid cool. They do that in the cars, so they certai…

Ever the speech was just a guy trying to pretend he was a robot.

Re: Tesla Optimus Bots Were Remotely Operated at Cybercab Event

#188

Post by schainks »

nomel wrote: post #183
schainks wrote: post #173

Am I missing something or was the point for those robots to be human controlled? Tesla is trying to have disposable body parts that are remotely controlled so their workers get hurt less often due to RSI or other assembly line accidents. It’s not like they’ll fix their safety culture if the occasional robot destruction keeps volume up and injuries down.

Reference? Them being eventually autonomous has been covered in the events and his talks about the eventual AI that will drive them.

No reference, this is my personal hypothesis. Tesla still needs to squeeze profit out of all this R&D.

Eventually AI eventually could take over, sure. What I see today is they can have humans control the robots for tasks that can easily injure humans.

Re: Tesla Optimus Bots Were Remotely Operated at Cybercab Event

#189

Post by iknowstuff »

sidibe wrote: post #105
beambot wrote: post #18

Reminiscent of Nikola's semi truck demonstration...

Or Teslas "battery swap" event which actually helped them earn them a huge amount of subsidies from the government. Watching after understanding Elons m.o. it is clearly fake or how else would they have a planned demo on stage with cameras that aren't positioned to show anything that's going on and then that tech they developed was never heard from again. They just distracted the crowd with a video of someone filling…

they did have a swapping station in CA they built to get the subsidy. it wasnt fake, just pointless

Re: Tesla Optimus Bots Were Remotely Operated at Cybercab Event

#190

Post by piva00 »

FactKnower69 wrote: post #182
beeflet wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Each robot had several human escorts, and the robots were limited to slow walking and a few slow hand gestures. More importantly, the robots were limited to doing no real work. They just feebly pick up objects and place them somewhere else, which I am pretty sure doesn't require AI. For example, the vid shows the robot pouring hot water into a glass with a massive funnel strapped to it. Why not have the robot fill t…

>It also irks me how the robots are just humanoids. Like for example, why have a head with two eyes. the risk-averse, cowardly, snivelling product design is really one of the most odious things about the whole Tesla shitshow. they had the opportunity to completely redesign the automobile from scratch, but chose to meekly clone the exact same bog standard sedan design everyone else converged on 50 years ago, clinging…

Though they can't move away too much from the teardrop design, it's one of the most aerodynamic shapes (and why so many production cars look like a decorated teardrop). Still agree they could have been bolder with other parts of the silhouette, it's unimaginative "futurism" coupled with some strange need to be branded Apple-esque.
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