Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk on Friday announced that Tesla was making a humanoid robot that would be unveiled sometime in 2022.
Speaking at Tesla’s AI Day, Musk said the robot would be five feet and eight inches tall, and that a prototype would be ready next year.
He explained that at the root of the economy is labor, and that this robot could do away with that. “We all want universal basic income, right?” he asked
Comparing the current fleet of Tesla cars to “semi-sentient” beings, he said whatever the vehicles are capable of could well be put into humanoid form.
That, in essence, seemed to be the origin of the thinking point for the Tesla Bot. After all, Musk would go on to assert that the robot would have “all of the essential things in the [Tesla] cars.”
Possibly sensing unease from the audience, he said amid their nervous laughter: “It’s intended to be friendly, of course.”
It was meant for a “world built for humans,” and would “eliminate dangerous, repetitive and boring tasks,” said Musk.
The official specs of the Tesla Bot revealed that while it had a weight of 125 lbs on its own, it could carry up to 45 lbs of weight, and had a speed of 5 miles per hour.
Musk also seemed to be putting common concerns about humanoid robots to rest, this time to more nervous laughter.
He said: “We are setting it at a mechanical level, at a physical level such that you can run away from it, and most likely overpower it.”
Musk also explained that people would be talk to the robot, to the extent that if it were to be told to “please pick up that bolt and attach it to the car with that wrench,” the robot “should be able to do that” without line-by-line or explicit instructions.
Watch Musk unveil the Tesla Bot concept here: