Tokyo, 2 January, /AJMEDIA/
It wasn’t that long ago that putting a robot in your home meant plugging in a Roomba and letting it roam around your floors like a little dust-busting sentry.
But now, thanks to lightning-fast developments in artificial intelligence and machine learning, robots are becoming smarter and far more human. And if the futurists of the world have their way, your next robot helper could be a humanoid that wanders your home on two legs.
In 2022, we saw huge leaps forward in the world of robotics. At Tesla’s 2022 AI Day, the company revealed the first two working prototypes of its so-called Tesla Bot: a walking humanoid called Optimus, built with off-the-shelf parts, and a second, more-advanced version of Optimus that the company wants to put into production.
Optimus is built around Tesla’s self-driving AI, but instead of being designed to navigate roads and understand traffic lights, the AI has been altered to negotiate the rest of the world and detect everyday objects and humans. Speaking at AI Day, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the robot was designed to be the kind of in-home helper you might one day buy as a gift for your parents.
“Optimus is designed to be an extremely capable robot made in very high volume — probably, ultimately, millions of units,” Musk said. “And it’s expected to cost much less than a car.”
