SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk is pouring faith into the upcoming humanoid robotics product Tesla Bot. Currently in development, the humanoid robot — codenamed Optimus — has been at the forefront of the billionaire's mind for the past year.
While many are unsold on the idea of a household robot, others are seemingly excited to see how Tesla creates a commercial robo-companion. Of course, for some, that arrives with a recent Musk pitch to make robot catgirls.
Tesla Bot will be the company's biggest success
Speaking at Tesla's Q1 2022 earnings call, owner Elon Musk explained that the company's robotics division will be the company's biggest sector. Despite selling millions of electric vehicles, Musk believes that the (currently) niche audience for household robots will overtake the car industry.
Musk claimed that Optimus — the working title for the first-gen Tesla Bot — is the company's most important product. Despite fanfare surrounding projects such as Cybertruck, the unrealised robot has the biggest potential to succeed.
“I was surprised that people did not realize the magnitude of the Optimus robot program,” Musk told the company. “The importance of Optimus will become apparent in the coming years. Those who are insightful or looking, listening carefully, will understand that Optimus will ultimately be worth more than the car business, worth more than FSD.”
The billionaire believes that the Optimus Tesla Bot will, one day, be more valuable than Tesla FSD. An acronym for full self-driving, FSD is the title product for Tesla vehicles, despite the fact that it often doesn't work as intended. (It gets confused by The Moon.)
Read More: A robot dog was introduced to a zoo; the animals didn’t like it
Will it be possible?
Of course, one of the major discussions surrounding Tesla Bot is whether or not the product is possible. As the first major humanoid robot for homes, Musk is hoping that his company will be able to make giant leaps in robotics technologies.
However, humanoid robotics have proven to be remarkably difficult to create, especially ones that can do the same tasks as robot dogs. Unlike robot dogs, humanoid robotics are bipedal, making complex navigation a lot harder to pull off without falling over.
Musk’s claims regarding Tesla Bot have been labelled as hyperbole by many, including us. While the world's richest man claims that the robot will bring in an “age of abundance”, we still have yet to see even prototype hardware. Instead, we've seen people in cosplay.
For a product said to be launching in homes in 2023, the current state of Tesla Bot leaves a lot to be desired. With that said, Tesla has hired an impressive army of robotics engineers to get the project done, so I guess we'll see what happens next year.
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