That was obvious to anyone with any experience with real-world robots.<p>Nice piece of machinery, though. Boston Dynamics' humanoids were clunky electrohydraulic mechanisms borrowed from their horse-type robots. All-electric is now possible and much simpler. Schatft was the first to get this working, and they had to liquid-cool the motors. Don't know if Tesla has to liquid cool. They do that in the cars, so they certainly understand liquid-cooled electric motors.<p>I suspect that body balance and possibly walking were automated. It's hard to balance a teleoperated robot manually, and robotic biped balancing has been working for years now.
This results in me trusting Tesla less.<p>If this was fake, how do we know the robovans were not remotely operated? They might as well be too to get the stock price up?<p>There is no way to know. I am really doubting Tesla now. It wouldn’t surprise me that, in order to prevent mishaps during the event, everything is remotely operated…<p>People will say: that’s not true. But where did Tesla clearly specify this upfront?<p>I saw the initial fullscreen disclaimer. But that might also apply to the robovans right?
It's all about controlling money that might go to more honest ventures.<p>Yes, humanity has engineers who are going to the moon, creating robots, investigating brain interfaces, improving public transport with buses and tunnels.<p>And there will always be monorail salesmen who try to soak up those investments, taking away from others.
How is stuff like this not considered fraud? This seems much worse to me than Musk's usual Tesla lies in which he is predicting some future capability. At least there is an argument that Musk believed it those at the time he said them or that they were optimistically possible despite being impractical. This seems to be material misrepresentation of the viability of one of the company's core R&D projects that Musk claims "will be the biggest product ever".
Surprising absolutely no one, I hope. Credibility seems difficult to generate for Tesla events. Maybe the secret sauce for Robotaxis is a human driver somewhere watching the cameras. Like driving Uber but from the comfort of home, and it's easy to hit the fridge or bathroom between rides.
What does everyone think about 1X's NEO? [0] They began from the idea of compliant robotics,[1] which seems to me to be a requirement for safe operation in proximity to humans.<p>Did Tesla make attendees sign a hefty liability waiver, since Optimus is not a compliant robot, or did they address the inherent problems some other way?<p>[0] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUrLuUxv9gE" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUrLuUxv9gE</a> (also remote controlled for now, while being trained)<p>[0] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sb6LMPXRdVc" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sb6LMPXRdVc</a><p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_robotics" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_robotics</a>
Tesla was not trying to hide this. The robots were telling anyone who asked that humans were helping control them. Unlike the robotaxis, which were explicitly advertised as autonomous.
It seemed to me the goal of the event was to make people imagine a dazzling sci-fi future from a schoolboy’s imagination, and not notice that the demo didn’t show much proof of technical advancement in automated driving.
The optimus bots seemed laggy. I thought the non verbal communication really suffered compared to a human using fingers and eye contact. The smoothness of the optimus movement was at odds with human movement - delicately but quickly darting around.<p>When a human makes eye contact with you and signals something with their hands - it is so responsive that you are certain that they are talking to you. With the robots, it was ambiguous.<p>Did someone put a low pass on the movements on top of a laggy remote control loop?
Demos from just-about every single humanoid robot company are highly scripted and teleoperated (telechirs). Nothing new here.<p>Generally speaking, the only demos that are not of the scripted and human-in-the-loop kind are simple ones. Even food delivery robots have remote drivers. Warehouse and floor cleaning robots are probably the two main examples of reasonably autonomous operation in a relatively constrained environment. Welding and assembly robots just play back a script, not unlike a CNC machine.
I was assuming that the robots at the Sphere also had some humans behind it if nothing more than to help "guide" the AI pieces. My assumption, at least.
Am I missing something or was the point for those robots to be human controlled?<p>Tesla is trying to have disposable body parts that are remotely controlled so their workers get hurt less often due to RSI or other assembly line accidents. It’s not like they’ll fix their safety culture if the occasional robot destruction keeps volume up and injuries down.
Come on, isn't this obvious? There's no way in crap they were fully autonomous, and I don't think anyone ever claimed that they were. In fact there's multiple examples of them saying "I am remote operated" when asked.<p>And that doesn't in any way take away from the fact that it's damn cool that they went from "guy in spandex suit" to a walking, dextrous, low latency telepresence robot in a few years.<p>I hate Musk's new politics (which is obviously what this is all about) but I feel bad for the engineers involved: I suspect everyone was stoked to show off their impressive progress, and a few marketing people decided to under-emphasize the telepresence and made them all look like jerks.
To be honest, the autonomous control of the robot seems like the easier part of the equation. (doing it safely in a room with guests, unguided... thats another matter). The physical limitations and packaging are a big challenge, and I dont think I saw Optimus lift anything remotely heavy.. just pull a beer tap.. a decision that probably speaks volumes about current limits of the technology.<p>To apply my first point to reality: put an Optimus in its current state/capability, on a commercial 0-turn lawn mower, plug Optimus into the mower's power takeoff, and have someone in another country remotely pilot the mower. That right there is worth every commercial lawn service having at least one on their crew TODAY.<p>The appeal of hot swapping an operator real time on the equipment you already own, whether it's a push lawn mower or a huge mining truck, provides enormous value right out of the gate. Especially in tasks where the Optimus can handle 90% of the task autonomously but needs to step aside or oversight for the last 10% of the job. Compare to a business model that requires purchase of all new very expensive and unique equipment.
It’s so funny to me when people still believe Elon when it comes to this or deadlines. I used to work for him and he always overpromises<p>Friendly reminder that in 2017 he was saying a car would drive autonomously from LA to NY in a year. It is now 2024 and that has not happened.<p>Friendly reminder that Tesla Semis are still not fully delivered and running.<p>Friendly reminder that the Roadster 2 is not rolling off the production line (people put down deposits too)!
There was no announcement that the robots were autonomous. So it follows that they were not.<p>There wasn't really misrepresentation here, at least as far as the ro ots are concerned.
I'd like to just say that Gwynne Shotwell might be one of the best executives in the world.<p>Shotwell has SpaceX catching rockets with chopsticks, while being able to keep Elon from f*cking it all up by "sleeping on the factory floor" or whatever other stunt he is pulling.<p>Tesla looks like a complete stock fraud sham for at least 5+ years (remember buying SolarCity because cousins?), then Boring and, Le Sigh.<p>Dude literally did a "We, Robot" event and then copied the "I, Robot" movie designs. He isn't even trying anymore, this is just his "rocket fuel" scam for whatever other shiny object he desires.<p>I'm super frustrated that someone set "good" things in motion, and we are letting them Mullenweg it all up.
man these demos are synonimous to slides and mockups by startup founders. they are intended to paint the probable future, the ideal end game user experience.<p>lots of people confuse it as the shippable product already. no sir, it's not like that.
That event was a huge disappointment. It's clear that Elon didn't consider it to be that important and didn't put any real effort into it.<p>There was nothing an investor could look at and get excited about, it was the same thing as he announced 5 years ago. Just now his self driving cars have been eclipsed by Waymo and cruise seems to have caught up to what they can do with their demos.<p>And why show the robots at all if they were just remote controlled by employees.
...<p>"This is awful! This is nothing like the Hell I visited two weeks ago!" Bill Gates responded. "I can't believe this! What happened to that other place, with the beautiful beaches, the beautiful women playing in the water!?"<p>"That was a demo," replied St. Peter.<p>also ED-209 from robocop, "You have 20 seconds to comply."
I mean, that should have been obvious to anyone after calling it: [0]<p>The 'fake it till you make it' fraud will just make everyone building so-called AI companies look bad and heavily faked with events like this.<p>But there is still time for the Theranos of AI to reveal themselves. (It is not Tesla Inc.)<p>[0] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41805764">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41805764</a>
I love all the "the fraud was so blatant it should have been obvious" comments.<p>Musk actually used this argument in his stock price manipulation trial, and the jury bought it.
I think it was fairly obvious from the show that the Optimus bots were remotely operated. Not like they tried to hide it at all. Just listen to the responses of the bots, they practically admitted that.<p>The cars, however, were almost certainly running the latest FSD (or some near future unreleased version).