Some robot experts who watched saw a project that seemed to be getting underway quickly. “There’s nothing fundamentally groundbreaking, but they’re doing cool stuff,” said Stefanie Tellex, an assistant professor at Brown University.
Henrik Christensenwho researches robotics and AI at UC Davis, calls Tesla’s native hominid “a good first design,” but adds that the company has shown no evidence that it can perform basic navigation, grasping or manipulation. Jessy Grizzle, a professor at the University of Michigan robotics lab who works on robots with legs, said Tesla’s project, while still early, appeared to be making good progress. “It’s incredible to go from a man in a suit to real hardware in 13 months,” he says.
Grizzle says Tesla’s experience and expertise in car making in areas such as batteries and electric motors could help advance robotic hardware. Musk claimed at the event that the robot would eventually cost about $20,000 — an astonishing amount given the project’s ambition and significantly cheaper than any Tesla vehicle — but offered no timetable for its launch.
Musk was also vague about who his customers would be, or what use Tesla might find for a humanoid in its own operations. A robot capable of advanced manipulation may be important for: productiontaking over parts of the car industry that are not automated, such as running wires through a dashboard or working carefully with flexible plastic parts.
In an industry where profits are wafer thin and other companies offer electric vehicles competing with Tesla’s, any manufacturing lead could be crucial. But companies have been trying to automate these tasks for years without much success. And a four-limbed design might not make much sense for such applications. Alexander Kernbaum, interim director of SRI Robotics, a research institute that has previously developed a humanoid robot, says that only in very complex environments do robots really feel like walking on their feet. “A focus on legs is more of an indication that they want to capture people’s imaginations rather than solve real-world problems,” he says.
Grizzle and Christens both say they will watch future Tesla demonstrations for signs of progress, especially for evidence of the robot’s manipulation skills. Staying balanced on two legs while lifting and moving an object is natural for humans, but a challenge to engineer in machines. “If you don’t know the mass of an object, you need to stabilize your body plus everything you’re holding while carrying and moving it,” Grizzle says.
Wise will be watching too, and despite being unimpressed thus far, hopes the project doesn’t flop like Google’s ill-fated robot company. acquiring spree in 2013, which dragged many researchers into projects that never saw the light of day. The search giant’s splurge included two companies working on humanoids: Boston Dynamics, which sold it in 2017, and Schaft, which closed it in 2018. realize that robotics is difficult,” says Wise.