Elon Musk says training Tesla's Optimus robot is like raising a toddler
Tesla is building 20,000 humanoid robots at its factory.
The short version
- Elon Musk compared training the machines to raising a toddler.
- The robots must learn tasks by watching people and practicing.
- Tesla plans to begin delivering the robots by next year.
Why it matters to you. For your business, the push into physical automation means industrial robotics is moving closer to everyday factories.
Elon Musk compared training a humanoid robot to raising a toddler during an earnings call on Wednesday. The Tesla chief executive officer said that while self-driving cars learn from massive vehicle fleets, the Optimus robot must learn by watching people and practicing tasks.
You can see this when you have a toddler who is wobbly and eventually learns to do things, Musk told investors. Tesla, the electric car maker, is building an Optimus Academy where robot prototypes can practice tasks and generate training data. Musk said Tesla needs to make between 10,000 and 20,000 robots to perform self-play and build up training data.
Tesla has begun production of the robot at its Fremont factory in California and expects to deliver units to customers by the end of next year. Musk cautioned that production would be bumpy and that designing durable robotic hands and artificial intelligence remains a challenge.
Unlike text models trained on internet data, robotics faces a shortage of real-world physical training data. Other startups, such as Apptronik, the Texas-based robotics company, are also setting up data factories where machines load conveyor belts to generate training information.
When humanoid helpers finally arrive on warehouse floors, they might handle the heavy lifting while your staff focuses on the front office.
Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, AI-edited
