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Is Optimus Autonomous Or Teleoperated?
Is Tesla's Optimus robot autonomous, or is it teleoperated? Apparently, both.
The robot is able to walk without running into obstacles, but when interacting with people, pouring drinks and so forth, it is being operated by a remote human being.
Update 15-Nov-2024:
Optimus Engineering Lead:
— The Humanoid Hub (@TheHumanoidHub) October 16, 2024
⦿ While all ~20 bots at 'WE, ROBOT' were human-assisted, they walked, balanced and danced on their own for 4 hours, with only one fall
⦿ The 22-DoF hand also expands tactile sensing
⦿ Further progress towards autonomy has been made in the background https://t.co/cc5YqXAhTu pic.twitter.com/j3lX7GEeEj
Milan Kovac, of Tesla's Optimus Engineering, said:
We had about 20 active bots at all times - walking through a packed crowd, dancing, taking selfies, or even pouring drinks and handing out snacks. While of course they were human assisted to some extent to help showcase our vision of an amazing future, they walked, balanced and danced on their own for ~4 hours straight, with only one single fall (someone's handbag caught a bot's hand).We were also excited to show progress on our next-gen hand/forearm, which doubles the hand's degrees of freedom from 11 to 22, and considerably expands tactile sensing coverage.
Making nice demo videos is not easy, but ensuring a safe live operation of many humanoids for hours in a public outdoor environment imposed a much higher bar. Through this push, we made significant improvement across full-body controls & locomotion, hardware stability, and infrastructure.
(Via Twitter post)
End update.
Of course, science fiction is replete with examples of both fully autonomous robots as well as teleoperated robots.
Here's a very early reference, from The Ancient Brain, by A.G. Stangland, published by Science Wonder Stories in 1929:
One day I was running a test on the polonium that flowed into the repulsion tubes to determine its quality. Ron, a classmate, approached me. “William will you take my place for a while at the ‘auto’ controls. I have to see Professor Luch personally for a few moments.”“All right, Ron.”
“Thanks, a lot.” I went to the control room where the three other men were manipulating their mechanical men, doing various duties that could not be done very efficiently by automatic levers and relays. I sat before the mirror that represented the electric eye of the robot, and by various levers moved “No. 7” to take a look at the temperature of the electric furnace for repulsion tube No. 3. Everything was functioning perfectly. I continued to do routine work relative to the operation of the repulsion tube...
(Read more about the mechanical men)
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 10/25/2024)
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