At Tesla’s AI day last Thursday night, the Tesla Bot was announced by the CEO of the company, Elon Musk, right at the end of the event. The company is currently working on the robot and a prototype is expected to be released some time next year. At the presentation, a few details were revealed about the robot’s appearance and what it would be built out of; it is expected to be as tall as 5 feet 8 inches and will weigh 125 pounds( as a result of lightweight material being used in the building process). Its head will be equipped with autopilot cameras used in Tesla’s vehicles to be cognisant of its environment and for a face it will have a screen which will display pertinent information to the users.
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.
The robot will be made such that you can run away from it or overpower it in the event that it turns against you( which isn’t very likely since Elon Musk himself labeled the robot as “friendly”). The inclusion of this feature stems from Elon Musk’s fear of AI taking over Civilization one day which he keeps reminding the world constantly. Speaking of AI taking over, the robot could be used to do tasks that can be deemed as dangerous, boring or repetitive like going to the grocery, according to Musk. He also added that physical work will be optional for people in the future as if they do not choose to do it they could be easily done by robots. However, some people may need to find other jobs as some people’s incomes actually do depend on these menial jobs. “We hope this does not feature in a dystopian sci-fi movie,” Musk jokes.
A mannequin of the robot had been brought on stage in the presentation and from the looks of it, the robot has a very Slenderman like look. For those of you unfamiliar with Slenderman, a picture will be attached below and you can see for yourself the similarities.
Tesla has a history of coming up with ideas that never came to fruition. So if you are a skeptic thinking the robot will never see the light of day, who knows, maybe you would be right. But its because of Elon’s genius that we got to see electric cars that do not use fossil fuels to drive by itself so in the end there might still be light at the end of the tunnel for this project.
