Elon Musk announced that Tesla might have a working prototype of Tesla Bot, also known as Optimus, Tesla’s humanoid robot, by September 30 – the end of the third quarter of 2022.
Last month, Musk announced ‘Tesla AI Day #2’ with ‘many cool updates’ on August 19.
The original “Tesla AI Day” held last year was an event focused on the company’s self-driving program. The automaker also unveiled its Dojo supercomputer and announced plans for the “Tesla Bot” humanoid robot – now known as Tesla Optimus.
The AI Day #2 was supposed to be held a year to the day after the first one, but Musk took to Twitter today to delay the event to September 30.
As a reason for the delay, the CEO said that Tesla may have a working prototype of Optimus by then:
When first announcing the project last year, Musk said that Tesla would have a working prototype by the end of 2022, and recently, the CEO even said that the company aims to start production of the robot in 2023.
This is an extremely ambitious timeline for such an ambitious project, but Musk said on several occasions that it has become a priority.
In January, the CEO said that Tesla is prioritizing product development of the Optimus humanoid robot in 2022 over other products.
Tesla plans to leverage its existing expertise in power electronics and batteries for electric vehicles to build the robot and use its AI expertise to give it a brain.
Musk said that the robot would at first be programmed to perform simple and repetitive tasks, including in manufacturing operations like Tesla’s own.
Tesla plans for the robot to improve over time and be able to perform a wider range of tasks that would make it useful for both commercial and consumer applications.
If successful, the project could have a massive impact on economies, which explains why Tesla has shifted its focus to it.
Late, Musk has even claimed Tesla could play a role in making Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) a reality through the humanoid robot project.
It sounds like we should learn a lot more about that on September 30th.
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