Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Thursday unveiled a humanoid robot called the Tesla Bot that runs on the same AI used by Tesla’s fleet of autonomous vehicles. A functioning version of the robot didn’t make an appearance during Musk’s reveal, though a slightly bizarre dance by a performer dressed like a Tesla Bot did.
The unexpected reveal came at the end of Tesla’s AI Day presentation, with Musk providing few details about the slightly creepy, Slenderman-like robot beyond a few PowerPoint slides. The 5-foot-8-inch robot is expected to weigh in at 125 pounds and be built from “lightweight materials,” he said.
Its head will be kitted out with the autopilot cameras used by Tesla’s vehicles to sense the environment and will contain a screen to display information. Internally, it will be operating via Tesla’s Full Self-Driving computer.
“It’s intended to be friendly,” Musk joked, “and navigate through a world built for humans.”
The robot’s appearance came after a 90-minute presentation detailing some of the artificial intelligence upgrades driving Tesla’s electric vehicles, including the Dojo supercomputer, which helps train cars to navigate city streets without human assistance. “It makes sense to put that onto humanoid form,” Musk said.
One particular slide said the Tesla Bot would eliminate “dangerous, repetitive, boring tasks,” and Musk provided an example, suggesting the robot could be told to “go to the store and get … the following groceries.” Not that such a task is particularly dangerous, but you might find it repetitive and boring.
Musk, prone to making bold statements about the future, riffed a little on how he envisions Tesla Bot changing the future of work, too. “This, I think, will be quite profound,” he said. “Essentially, in the future, physical work will be a choice. If you want to do it, you can, but you won’t need to do it.”
