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Speaking at Tesla's AI Day event, the billionaire entrepreneur
said the robot, which stands around five foot eight inches tall,
would be able to handle jobs from attaching bolts to cars with a
wrench, or picking up groceries at stores.
The robot would have "profound implications for the economy,"
Musk said, addressing a labour shortage. He said it was
important to make the machine not "super-expensive."
The AI Day event came amid growing scrutiny over the safety and
capability of Tesla's "Full Self-Driving" advanced driver
assistant system.
Musk didn't comment on that scrutiny over the safety of Tesla
technology but said that he was confident of achieving full
self-driving with higher safety than humans using current in-car
cameras and computers.
U.S. safety regulators earlier this week opened an investigation
into Tesla's driver assistant system because of accidents where
Tesla cars crashed into stationary police cars and fire trucks.
Two U.S. senators have also called on the Federal Trade
Commission to investigate Tesla's claims for its "Full
Self-Driving" system.
At the event on Thursday Tesla also unveiled chips it designed
in-house https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-unveils-own-chip-ai-training-computer-dojo-2021-08-20
for its high-speed computer, Dojo, to help develop its automated
driving system. Musk said Dojo would be operational next year.
He said Tesla will also introduce new hardware for its
self-driving computer for its Cybertruck electric pick-up truck
in "about a year or so."
Tesla in July pushed back the launch of its much-anticipated
Cybertruck from this year, without giving a timeframe for its
arrival on the market.
On Thursday some questioned whether Musk, who has frequently
touted technology advances at showpiece events only to scale
plans down later on, would be able to come good on his aims for
the robot.
"Is the 'Tesla Bot' the next dream shot to pump up the hype
machine?" said Raj Rajkumar, professor of electrical and
computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.
"I can safely say that it will be much longer than 10 years
before a humanoid bot from any company on the planet can go to
the store and get groceries for you."
(Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Karishma Singh and Kenneth
Maxwell)
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