We thought we were seeing the future at the Tesla event. Now we have many doubts about how Optimus works

Optimus was one of the protagonists of last week’s ‘We, Robot’ event, in which we learned about the Tesla Cybercab and the Cybervan. He humanoid robot He walked through the crowd, waited on guests, served drinks at the bar, and danced on an illuminated stage to remixes of ‘Release the Beast’ and ‘What Is Love.’ Some of what we saw that night might not be so surprising.

Elon Musk has been highlighting the advantages of Optimus for some time and its importance for the business model of the company he runs. We have heard it said that the robot can be a teacher, but also take care of children, walk pets, be a friend, mow the lawn and even go shopping. During the last event he also suggested that it could arrive in the future at a price of between $20,000 and $30,000.

Autonomous or remote controlled robots?

As we can see on social media, some of the people who attended ‘We, Robot’ quickly went from surprise to skepticism. Were they interacting with machines powered by artificial intelligence (AI) or was there some kind of human invention? “I asked Optimus, the waiter, if he was being remote controlled. “I think he basically confirmed it to me.” said one of the attendees in X.

The robot responded in a way that seemed unartificial that it was being “assisted by a human” and that it “is not yet fully autonomous.” Another guest invented finding out how much AI a unit that walked among people had. “I can’t reveal how much, that’s something you’ll have to find out later,” was the answer. The famous youtuber Marques Brownlee also he looked confused with Optimus.

Optimus at the October ‘We, Robot’ event

Tasks that are as basic for humans as walking, manipulating objects or maintaining conversations are real challenges for robotics and AI. Figure’s humanoid robot, one of the most advanced at the moment, is working in a BMW factory in the United States, but both its movements and its speed They are very limited compared to humans. Tesla seemed to have overcome that barrier.

Optimus at the October ‘We, Robot’ event

What happened during last week’s event has not only captured the attention of the public and the press, but also of the investment world. Adam Jonas, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, was disappointed and pointed out that He believes that humanoid thefts depended on human intervention, so it didn’t really mean “significant progress.” Bloomberg also addressed this issuegetting more responses.

Training tasks with human teleoperation

An article published by the economic media says that “Tesla used humans to remotely control some capabilities of its Optimus robot prototypes.” In this sense, he added that there were employees located in other places who were in charge of supervising the interactions. This is information that has not been confirmed by Tesla and comes from sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.

At the time of publishing this article it is unclear what level of support the Optimus robots would have had during the event. Within this discipline the possibilities are multiple. We find everything from “total” remote control where the robots repeat what the operators do, to assistance in specific functions that does not necessarily translate into total intervention. The details are a mystery.

It should be noted that the company led by Musk has opted for motion capture as one of the techniques to improve the capabilities of its robots. Specifically, it has been hiring people with salaries of around 6,000 euros to carry out activities in special suits and help collect data to promote engineering projects.

Images | Tesla (1, 2)

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