It’s amazing what robots can do these days. Opening doors, calling an elevator and even disarming an explosive are all things that robots have managed to do in recent years. It’s an impressive set of feats, and a video recently posted to social media of Tesla’s Optimus robot catching a tennis ball in mid-air, then repeating the feat, certainly seems like something to add to the annals of cybernetic accomplishment.
As Milan Kovac, Tesla’s VP, Head of Engineering — Optimus (Tesla Bot) explained in a follow-up post, the reality behind this feat is a little more complicated than that. Alternately, the demonstration is a big deal, but maybe not for the reasons you’d initially expect.
Just like when Tesla’s robots mixed drinks earlier this fall, there was a human working behind the scenes to guide Optimus through its paces. Kovac explained that the test was less about the robot’s reflexes per se and more that its hand was dextrous enough to catch a ball, full stop. “Our new hand/forearm with double the number of degrees of freedom now in action on the bot!” he wrote. “There’s 22 DoFs on the hand, and 3 on the wrist/forearm.”
“Interesting challenge around having enough squishiness/compliance and a protective layer on the fingers & palm, without affecting tactile sensing too much,” Kovac added.
This Two-Legged Robot Runs Faster Than the Average Human
Turns out having sneakers on helpsWe’re still a long way from a robot that can autonomously pull off an intricate secret handshake, then. It’s also encouraging to see the company being more transparent about the role of a human in these tests, as Electek’s Fred Lambert pointed out. You might not be able to play catch with Optimus yet, but this video and Kovac’s explanation do give viewers a better sense of the state of this technology.
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