{"id":514532,"date":"2021-08-20T07:30:07","date_gmt":"2021-08-20T05:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=514532"},"modified":"2021-08-20T07:30:07","modified_gmt":"2021-08-20T05:30:07","slug":"elon-musk-unveils-humanoid-robot-to-take-over-boring-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/technology\/514532\/elon-musk-unveils-humanoid-robot-to-take-over-boring-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk unveils humanoid robot to take over \u2018boring\u2019 work"},"content":{"rendered":"
As Elon Musk stood in the wings at Tesla Inc\u2019s AI day, a person dressed in a skintight white suit and grey space helmet did a jerky robot dance across the stage.And with that, Musk flagged a move into a new realm of science-fiction: lifelike humanoid robots designed to take the drudgery out of everyday life.<\/p>\n

The \u2018Tesla Bot,\u2019 a prototype of which should be available next year, is designed to eliminate \u201cdangerous, repetitive and boring tasks,\u201d like bending over to pick something up, or go to the store for groceries, Musk said. \u201cEssentially the future of physical work will be a choice.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTesla is arguably the world\u2019s biggest robotic company,\u201d Musk said. \u201cOur cars are basically semi-sentient robots on wheels.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u2018Bot\u2019 was the show stopper of the inaugural AI Day, which highlighted Tesla engineers giving highly technical presentations on the automaker\u2019s autonomous driving functionality with a goal of recruiting talent to the Palo Alto, California-based company.<\/p>\n

\u201cDevelop the next generation of automation, including a general-purpose, bi-pedal, humanoid robot capable of performing tasks that are unsafe, repetitive or boring,\u201d says a job posting on its site<\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019re seeking mechanical, electrical, controls, and software engineers to help us leverage our AI expertise beyond our vehicle fleet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Musk has a long history of unveiling products that are mere prototypes – essentially selling a vision before it exists in reality. In November 2017, Tesla unveiled its Semi truck at a late-night event near Los Angeles, but that vehicle has been pushed back until 2022 at the earliest, due, in part, to challenges making larger battery cells.<\/p>\n

Tesla\u2019s stated mission is to accelerate the world\u2019s transition to sustainable energy, and a humanoid robot feels a bit like mission creep. Musk failed to outline how the robots would fit into the clean-energy mission.<\/p>\n

\n

Read: Elon Musk\u2019s brain-computer startup Neuralink raises $205 million<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Elon Musk stood in the wings at Tesla Inc\u2019s AI day, a person dressed in a skintight white suit and grey space helmet did a jerky robot dance across the stage.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":514542,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9878],"tags":[26,6118],"class_list":["post-514532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-headline","tag-tesla"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514532"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":514548,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514532\/revisions\/514548"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/514542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}