The Truth About Elon Musk’s Tesla Robot: Is the Vision Possible?

Elon Musk has unveiled plans at AI Tesla Day for a new Tesla robot that would excel at mundane activities such as screwing bolts and react well to changes unlike most of today’s robots, yet his big aspirations include some familiar robotics faults that might impede these claims. His definition of this humanoid robot includes tasks that today’s robots cannot perform, such as reacting effectively to changes. So how the Tesla robot fare in the near future?

Will Elon’s Tesla Robot Live Up to His Grand Plans?

Musk highlighted that the Tesla robot can do mundane chores like screwing in bolts or going grocery shopping, both of which would need a significant amount of specialized, adaptive programming. The robot would have to adapt and alter orders depending on the situation, which would be extremely difficult to program. The robot will need to decide how it’ll change its tasks based on certain factors without abandoning the given task altogether.

How will this robot deal with a missing ingredient in the grocery list, a bolt with the wrong size, or choosing a perfectly ripe fruit in the grocery store? Not to mention Musk’s depiction of the robot receiving spoken commands, which adds a new requirement for natural language understanding.

It’s simple to link Musk’s goals to travel to and settle on Mars with his views about robots here. After all, most of the day-to-day job of maintaining a community will be tedious or dangerous and he could envision robots working in manufacturing or even farming.

However, he specifies that this robot will be of non-threatening size and capability, measuring 5’8″ and weighing 125 pounds, with a peak speed of roughly five miles per hour. The risky labor meant for these robots will resemble construction sites rather than settlement security or any other bigger jobs.

According to Northwestern University robotics professor Michael Peshkin, the robot Musk is describing sounds like human warehouse employees, whose work requires reaching and grabbing stacks of goods, and tossing or removing bad products from the assembly line. While the label “unskilled labor” is sometimes used for work like these, humans still utilize a tremendous amount of complex judgment and caution when performing these seemingly easy moves.

When trying to automate activities that people do, like selecting items off a shelf in a warehouse, owners of these robots frequently end up transforming the warehouse itself. Peshkin explained that these robots have barcodes, the racks are in conventional positions, the items are packed differently, and all kinds of adaptations are made to keep the environment safe for robots.

Robot Vs Human

Manufacturing has had some of the world’s most advanced application robots for decades since many manufacturing activities are relatively doable with the present capabilities of today’s robots. A continuous flow of commodities may pass on a conveyor belt, where a robot needs to merely reach out, twist or glue a specific component or item into position, and then pull back its robotic arm.

Most robot hands encountered in manufacturing are metallic, stiff, have limited dexterity, and just a handful have more than three fingers, Heni Ben Amor, an Arizona State University roboticist, said. Human hands are incomprehensibly complex, and an equivalent robotic hand would require a large number of motors. Human hands can carefully handle anything from a tomato to a jackhammer. One explanation for this is that the human hand is made up of a variety of components, including hard bones, complex muscles, and soft skin.

One area where Musk is correct is that robots can go where human employees cannot because the labor is unsafe or monotonous. As Peshkin explained, why not make robots accomplish tasks where humans do not belong, where the work is risky, or where humans do not perform well?

However, that does not necessarily imply that a robot that can listen to instructions and translate language into a range of duties. A big difficulty with autonomous robots at the software and intelligence level is the huge variety in human surroundings. In this circumstance, robots cannot rely on a human programmer and must continually improve and adapt their behavior, Ben Amor explained.

When trying to automate activities that people do, like selecting items off a shelf in a warehouse, owners of these robots frequently end up transforming the warehouse itself. Peshkin explained that these robots have barcodes, the racks are in conventional positions, the items are packed differently, and all kinds of adaptations are made to keep the environment safe for robots.

Collaborative Robots

Peshkin contributed to the development of the concept of “cobots”, which he defines as collaborative robots that cooperate well with humans. He explained that there are things where people can physically collaborate with machines, with each providing their strength.

Musk’s words are an exciting rallying cry, even if what he’s proposing is still way beyond the world’s present capabilities with robots. According to Ben Amor, Elon Musk is primarily a visionary who excels at uniting young and elderly scientists and engineers around a common purpose. Along the way, he will almost certainly employ and inspire a new generation of roboticists.

Even attaining a small portion of what Elon Musk announced would be a significant achievement in the field of robotics, Ben Amor added.