Elon Musk Unveils Tesla’s Optimus AI Humanoid Robot
Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently unveiled the company’s humanoid AI robot, called the Tesla Optimus, during a live event. Musk stated that the robot would greatly contribute to progress in artificial intelligence, autonomous driving, and artificial general intelligence (AGI). Currently, the robot has the ability to move all of its fingers independently, with thumbs that move with two degrees of freedom, allowing it to carry out a myriad of real-world tasks. At a price point of less than $20,000, the Tesla Optimus is being designed for production at high volumes.
Features and Capabilities of the Tesla Optimus Robot
The Tesla Optimus robot features 28 structural actuators with 11 degrees of freedom in its hands and supports Wi-Fi and LTE running at 52 volts. Tesla’s team intends to reduce the cost of the robot and increase its efficiency over time in order to enable production at scale. They plan to achieve this by reducing the part count and power consumption, minimizing the wire count in the arms, and locating the compute and power distribution hardware in the physical center of the robot’s torso. The battery pack, which will hold 2.3 kilowatt-hours, is located in the middle of the robot’s torso and can complete roughly eight hours of work on a single charge. The battery pack has a single print circuit board within the pack to take care of sensing, charge management, and power distribution.
Tesla plans to use its supply chain autopilot software and hardware for the Tesla Optimus robot. This will allow the robot to process vision data, make split-second decisions using multi-sensory inputs, and carry out communications, including audio support and hardware-level security to protect both the robot and humans in its vicinity. The robot employs a form of Tesla’s autopilot, using its neural networks for computer vision to achieve volumetric depth rendering of objects, as well as make an estimation of its local environment to navigate towards its charging station.
The robot’s locomotion planning is carried out in three different stages. First, the desired path is calculated, then the footsteps are planned across that path, and finally, the reference trajectory is calculated using state estimation and sensors. The robot tracks its central mass trajectory to give the robot the ability to walk steadily despite dynamic changes in terrain or balancing scenarios.
The Tesla robot’s hands are ergonomically designed to grasp objects like a human hand would in order to easily and efficiently function inside a factory environment. The hands have sensory feedback and adaptability for new objects, with six actuators, 11 degrees of freedom, and non-back drivable fingers with the power to carry a 20-pound bag. The robot’s actuators come in six unique designs across 28 separate joints, including three rotary actuators and three linear actuators with multiple sensors, all with extremely impressive output force.
The structural foundation of the robot is extremely strong, being built to weather falls without breaking actuators or requiring expensive maintenance to continue working as normal. The model has been run through extensive simulations using Tesla’s crash software to create stresses in all the components to design them to be as resilient as possible.
Future Plans for the Tesla Optimus Robot
Tesla’s ultimate goal is to make so many Optimus robots that the global economy becomes quasi-infinite, leading to a future of abundance and abolishing poverty. Because of the ability of these humanoid robots to perform work tasks in the place of humans, they could quickly start saving humans from having to perform dangerous or back-breaking tasks. The company plans to begin optimizing the robot for real-world tests in their factories to automate increasing numbers of operating processes over the next months and years.
Make a Video: A New Text to Video AI System from Meta
Meta, formerly known as Facebook, has unveiled its new artificial intelligence system called Make a Video, which allows people to transform text prompts into short, high-quality video clips. This new AI model builds on recent advances in text-to-image generation technology to facilitate its text-to-video generation.
To learn about the world and its descriptions, the AI system uses images with descriptions. To learn how the world moves, it uses unlabeled video. By doing this, the Make a Video AI allows a user to bring their imagination to life by creating unique, whimsical videos with just a text prompt. It can even create videos from existing images or create similar videos from existing videos given to it.
Meta’s Commitment to Responsible AI
Meta says they are committed to developing responsible artificial intelligence by ensuring safe use of the state-of-the-art video generation technology. In order to reduce harmful, misleading, and biased content, their research adheres to the following steps. First, the neural network analyzes millions of data points to gain insight into the world. Then, Meta applies filters to minimize the possibility of generating harmful content. Second, because Make a Video is able to create videos that look real, they add a watermark to all videos to let viewers know that the video was created with AI and is not a recorded video. Third, while they hope to make the technology widely accessible to the public soon, until then, they will continue to thoroughly analyze and test their artificial intelligence model to ensure that each step of the release is safe. Finally, Make a Video uses publicly accessible datasets, giving their research an additional level of transparency.
Conclusion
Elon Musk’s Tesla Optimus robot and Meta’s Make a Video AI system are two examples of the progress being made in artificial intelligence. Elon Musk’s vision for the future is a world of abundance with humanoid robots doing most of the heavy lifting. Meta’s Make a Video AI technology allows users to create unique, imaginative videos with just a text prompt. As these technologies continue to develop, it is important to consider their impact on society and ensure that they are used responsibly.