Tesla's Humanoid Robot Optimus is making headlines yet again because of a new video shared by the company. In a video shared by the official X account
of Tesla, we can see Optimus learning new tasks by watching humans perform them. It feels like the robot is watching tutorials to learn new skills. As compared to traditional robot programming, this could be dubbed a groundbreaking update. And yes, this brings Optimus robot a step closer to acting like a human. With the help of learning new actions, Optimus can turn out to be heavily useful in real-world operations.
Elon Musk's Statement On Optimus' Development
Elon Musk has said that Tesla wants Optimus to learn from real-world videos that are available on YouTube and then perform identical tasks on its own. Milan Kovac, Engineering Lead at Tesla, said that the advancement has already helped Optimus in doing jobs like stirring food, taking out trash, sorting items, and vacuuming.
With this method of learning, Optimus will not need complex programming for every single task. In place of that, he can just analyse human examples and then be told to do the task with a text or voice command. Musk says that this will provide Optimus 'task extensibility', which means he can learn almost anything at a solid pace if the video contains accurate information.
Tesla has shared multiple short clips in the past showing Optimus doing different tasks like putting things together, cleaning, and dancing. But, the early stage demos incurred a lot of criticism as the audience believed that the robot was doing tasks under the control of humans instead of doing them on its own.
Musk has called the learning from videos concept a turning point in the development of Optimus. And the Tesla boss also said that Optimus is the biggest product of all time, and it could beat the Tesla car business in the future. Nonetheless, critics have a different story to tell as they say that we are still far away from seeing a true general-purpose robot that will work seamlessly in workplaces and homes.
