A Humanoid Robot Scenario for a Billionaire: The Value of a Fully Electric Autonomous Fleet: Boggles the Mind
A bunch of Tesla’s humanoid Optimus robots walked out alongside the reveal of Tesla’s new Robovan vehicle at tonight’s Cybercab event. The robot is also seen in a video doing daily human tasks like bringing in a package off the porch and watering your plants.
A billionaire takes to the stage with a humanoid robot by his side to show off a futuristic technology that he claims will make the world a better place.
The profit margin on its cars are extremely high, which makes it attractive for an automobile manufacturer. But Musk has his eye on the much fatter profit margins of the software industry.
George Gianarikas from Canaccord Genuity Group believes that Musk does not need to invest a lot of money in his approach. That’s a combination that is expensive now, but would pay off if there were, say, millions of robotaxis on the road.
“The value of a fully electric autonomous fleet is generally gigantic — boggles the mind, really.” he told investors in 2021. “That will be one of the most valuable things that’s ever done in the history of civilization.”
Musk is notorious for his enthusiasm when it comes to estimating how soon a robot will arrive. He has poked fun at himself for all the times he has been wrong.
Waymo, Cruise, and Tesla are not Rentable: How Robotaxis End up Being Trapped, Not Yours to Know
Companies like Alphabet’s Waymo and GM’s Cruise, meanwhile, have already sent driverless taxis onto streets — although Cruise put human “safety drivers” back behind the wheel after a crash last year. Someone is on call if a car gets stuck. But that’s a far cry from needing constant oversight: According to data it supplied the state of California, Waymo drove nearly 1.2 million fully driverless miles last year with a total of 14 “disengagements,” or times the software required manual control.
Even for those companies, robotaxis aren’t profitable yet. The auto market research giant J.D. Power recently surveyed people who have ridden in robotaxis and found that while passengers generally liked the experience, they don’t find the taxis practical. Until they’re cheaper and cover more ground, the pollsters concluded, “the service will remain a novelty transportation method.”
Musk insists that the approach of his company is superior. “Our entire road network is designed for biological neural nets” — that is, human brains — “and eyes, so naturally cameras and digital neural nets are the solution,” Musk told investors earlier this year. Tesla also has enormous amounts of driving data from its vehicles on the road today.
“Tesla uses a ‘train and pray’ approach, where you fix a problem by throwing more data at the system,” Aurora CPO Sterling Anderson said in a webcast, quoted in Aurora’s email. It is problematic in a safety critical industry where you need proof that you’ve fixed it.
Anderson helped launch the first partial automation system atTesla, which he used to work at, according to the Aurora email. Waymo just snagged a former Tesla exec for its team, too.
Regulatory concerns about autonomous robots: the autonomous sector of the 21st century isn’t just a technicolor phenomenon
The US doesn’t have any federal laws about self-driving, so a patchwork of state and city regulators set the boundaries.
Musk has always acknowledged that achieving full self-driving is not just a matter of technological innovation; if regulators aren’t convinced a robotaxi fleet is safe, it isn’t going anywhere.
That has implications for the physical design of vehicles. Cruise recently abandoned plans for a futuristic robotaxi vehicle with no steering wheel, returning to a more conventional design that a human could operate, primarily to reduce the risk of running afoul of regulators.
Software might be affected by governmental concerns. Gianarikas says regulators who dig into the coding of a system built by “end-to-end” deep learning might not like what they find.
“You can imagine a scenario where [regulators] just kind of have this moment, like ‘What? You do not have hard-coded software rules? he says. “‘How do you control it?’
Source: Tesla is expected to unveil a robotaxi tonight: 5 things to know
From Robots to Humanoid Robots: A Livestream Presentation at Musk’s we, robot event in Las Vegas, Oct. 27
The event is named We, Robot, because of the ethical and psychological ramifications of building increasingly human-likerobots. It’s also the title of a very vaguely related Will Smith action movie.
In the summer of this year, Musk stated that the long-term value of the company would surpass that of everyone else. “A humanoid robot that can do pretty much anything you asked of it. Everyone on Earth is going to want one.
Dan Ives, an analyst and a long-time Tesla bull, will be in attendance on Thursday night. He is less interested in being a robot than in Musk being able to show a fully automated vehicle that works.
Musk made a Gen 2 bot last year. He said on the April earnings call that Optimus will perform useful tasks by the end of this year and could be sold by the end of next year.
After the presentation, livestream footage showed people interacting with Optimus robots at tables and in crowds. The robots weren’t doing much but waving in the Astro Bot style. There was a table of drinks — but the Optimus bot was not seen doing more than holding a cup of ice. However, one bot could hand over small gift bags at another table and play rock paper scissors with guests. And there was an enclosed gazebo with a bunch of dancing robots inside.
Musk’s Cost of Life: From Served Drinks to Babysitting Your Kids in a Small Space-Time, from 20 to 300,000
Musk states that he can basically do anything, from serving drinks to babysitting your kids. He claimed it will cost between $20,000 and $30,000 over the long term.