Elon Musk, the famous entrepreneur and visionary, recently shared a video on Twitter showing his humanoid robot Optimus from Tesla folding a T-shirt on a table in a development center. The robot’s ability to perform this task appears to be quite proficient, but there is some information that Musk later shared that certainly diminishes some of the enthusiasm for the robot’s domestic endeavor.
A robot still dependent
First, Musk pointed out that it can fold T-shirts faster than Optimus. Second, the robot does not act autonomously, which is obviously the ultimate goal. Instead, the robot acts like a very expensive puppet, or at best like a modern version of early rudimentary automatons, performing prescribed movements to accomplish the task. Musk said that eventually “surely it will be able to do this completely autonomously,” without the artificial limitations present in this demonstration, such as the fixed-height table and a single item of clothing in the carefully placed basket.
Limitations of technical demonstrations
Tesla has demonstrated a number of extraordinary technical skills with videos recently released by the company, but it is likely that all of these are highly scripted and pre-programmed activities that showcase the impressive functionality of the robot’s joints, servos, and limbs, rather than its artificial intelligence. Elon’s clarification, when considered for just a moment, effectively translates into “all the very difficult things will happen next.”
A step forward for manipulating soft materials
I do not want to underestimate the difficulty of creating a humanoid machine that can manipulate soft materials such as clothing in a way similar to human interaction with such objects; it is a truly extraordinary piece of animatronics work. However, to suggest that this brings Optimus closer to the point where he will function as a fully functional domestic servant with all the capabilities of a human domestic worker that he could replace would be like showing a video of a wooden puppet and adding “of course, he will soon become a real boy.”
Elon Musk’s predictions
Musk is famous for saying that things will happen in a period of time that makes absolutely no sense, but his prediction of “between three and five years,” made during the unveiling of the robot prototype last year (not counting the year before, when it was just a person in a costume), is ridiculous given its current status and the state of the art of robotics in general.
In conclusion, it is not yet time to get rid of the time spent folding laundry, but the idea of a humanoid robot like Optimus performing household tasks is certainly fascinating and could become a reality in the future. However, there are still many technical challenges to overcome before we can fully enjoy the benefits of a fully functional domestic robot.