Elon Musk introduces robot to replace human workers

After a presentation of Tesla’s AI project, Tesla CEO Elon Musk last Thursday (19 August) unveiled his latest project as he said, “Behold, my Tesla Bot,” as a dancer clad in spandex stepped in. Saying that the dancer is a model for the project, he announced that the humanoid robot is all set for launch sometime next year.

Despite his fear of AI overpowering humanity, the entrepreneur came up with Tesla Bot, a humanoid robot to help with either daily mundane tasks or the dangerous ones. The robot will stand at 170cm and weigh about 56kg with “human-level hands”. However, he said that the robot is “intended to be friendly” and at a mechanical level, at a physical level, owners can run away from it or even overpower it in case of an error.

However, the announcement is met with skepticism as Tesla Inc. has a track record of  coming up with fancy tech ideas that it eventually struggles to realise, such as the battery swap, solar-powered Supercharger. The announcement does not really say much about the end product and left the audience to their own imagination.

Meanwhile, Tesla still has to face autopilot issues in 765,000 vehicles since the first edition of the car was sold. Musk yesterday (23 August) stated that the company is working on updates for its self-driving software, which is expected to complete as soon as possible, while acknowledging that the Full Self-Driving Beta version 9.2 is “not great”.