Elon Musk has revealed a new teaser image of his company’s Optimus humanoid robot that will be fully unveiled at the end of next month.
The picture showed robotic hands making a heart shape at the company’s annual shareholders meeting in Austin Thursday evening and touted a full reveal of Tesla Optimus at AI Day on September 30.
‘AI Day, part two, I think people will be blown away,’ Musk said. ‘But that’s at the end of next month, so we’ll leave that – there’s gonna be a lot of cool stuff.’
The Tesla bot would be 5’8 and weigh 125 pounds. It will be set to include the Autopilot computer used in the company’s electric cars, which will allow the humanoid to recognize real-world objects, although the robot will have its own customized sensors and actuators.
It will also be able to ‘deadlift’ up to 150 pounds, carry 45 pounds, walk 5 miles per hour, and have human-like hands plus visual sensors giving it the ability to ‘see.’
‘[You can] talk to it and say, “Please pick up that bolt and attach it to a car with that wrench,” and it should be able to do that,’ Musk said last August about the robot. ‘”Please go to the store and get me the following groceries.” That kind of thing. I think we can do that.’
Tesla’s Autopilot cameras will be fitted in the front of the bot’s head and its inner workings will be powered by the company’s Full Self-Driving computer. The bots will apparently operate through Tesla’s Full Self-Driving computer interface, which is what’s in the Tesla Model 3, X, S, Y, and Roadster.
‘It’s intended to be friendly, of course,’ Musk said during the initial Tesla Bot announcement last year. ‘And navigate through a world built for humans.’
During a question period following Tesla’s AI Day last year, Musk said: ‘We should be worried about AI. What we’re trying to do here at Tesla is making useful AI that people love and is … unequivocally good.’
‘We have a very talented team at Tesla that I’m working with closely to have a prototype humanoid robot ready by the end of September. And I think we are tracking to that point,’ Musk said at a business event in June.
The notion of robotic companions may seem far-fetched. However, Intuition Robotics, which makes a bot called ElliQ, was recently taped by New York officials for 834 of its machines that can help senior citizens who are dealing with loneliness.