The Value of Fully Electric Robot Continua: Musk, Waymo, Cruise, and Other Future Autonomous Systems, and How the Robots Can Get Their Own Way

The Cybercab event tonight will feature the reveal of a new vehicle byTesla, while a bunch of their humanoid Optimusrobots walk out. The robot is also seen in a video doing daily human tasks like bringing in a package off the porch and watering your plants.

A billionaire is on stage, possibly with a humanoid robot by his side, to show off his futuristic technology, which he says will transform the world.

Tesla makes money selling electric vehicles — in fact, its profit margins on its cars, which are consistently in the double digits, are enviable for an automaker. But Musk has his eye on the much fatter profit margins of the software industry.

Musk has always maintained that demand for the software will be much higher when it is fully autonomous — in part because that would allow people to make money off their personal vehicles by lending them out, like a driverless Uber or Lyft.

“The value of a fully electric autonomous fleet is generally gigantic — boggles the mind, really.” He told the investors in 2021. This will be one of the most valuable things that’s been done in the history of civilization.

Still, Gianarikas notes that while there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical about a Tesla robotaxi fleet, Elon Musk has a track record of eventually proving skeptics wrong.

Companies like Alphabet’s Waymo and GM’s Cruise, meanwhile, have already sent driverless taxis onto streets — although Cruise put human “safety drivers” back behind the wheel after a crash last year. The systems often have someone on call to assist remotely if a car gets stuck. According to the data supplied by the state of California, Waymo drove over a million fully self driving miles with at least 14 disengagements or times the software required manual control last year.

The robotaxis are not profitable yet for those companies. The auto market research giant J.D. Power recently surveyed people who have ridden in robotaxis and found that while passengers generally liked the experience, they don’t find the taxis practical. Until they’re cheaper and cover more ground, the pollsters concluded, “the service will remain a novelty transportation method.”

Musk decided to build a system based only on relatively cheap cameras, with no other inputs; other companies also use radar and other pricey high-tech sensors. Musk has embraced end-to-end learning, where the artificial intelligence learns to drive from raw data, and other companies add rules and guardrails to their artificial intelligence systems.

In a webcast, Aurora’s chief financial officer said that there was an analogy between a train and pray approach and fixing a problem by throwing more data at the system. This is a problem in a safety critical industry, where you have to have confidence in your ability to fix it.

Anderson used to work at Tesla, where he helped launch Tesla’s Autopilot software, its first partial-automation system, the Aurora email notes. The ex-Tesla exec was hired by Waymo, as well.

The Code Isn’t: Regulating Self-Driving Vehicles in the Landau-Landau Age: 5 Things to Know about Tesla

The United States doesn’t have federal laws governing self-drive but a patchwork of state and city regulators set the boundaries.

Musk has always admitted that achieving full self- driving is more than just a matter of technology, and if regulators don’t agree, it isn’t going anywhere.

That has implications for the physical design of vehicles. Cruise recently abandoned plans for a futuristic robotaxi vehicle with no steering wheel, returning to a more conventional design that a human could operate, primarily to reduce the risk of running afoul of regulators.

Software may be affected by governmental concerns. Gianarikas says regulators who dig into the coding of a system built by “end-to-end” deep learning might not like what they find.

“You can imagine a scenario where [regulators] just kind of have this moment, like ‘What? You don’t have hard-coded software rules? He says so. How do you keep it under control?

Source: Tesla is expected to unveil a robotaxi tonight: 5 things to know

Dan, Tesla, and Optimus: A Robotically Self-Sustainable Robot Experiment in an Increasingly Human-Like Environment

We, Robot is a reference to a collection of stories by Isaac Asimov that explore ethical and psychological implications of building increasingly human-like robots. It’s also the title of a very vaguely related Will Smith action movie.

That hints at the possibility that, in addition to a robotaxi, the reveal could feature Optimus, the humanoid robot Tesla has been developing as an autonomous laborer capable of doing repetitive tasks.

Dan is an analyst and a long-time bull. He doesn’t care if a fully self-sufficient vehicle works or not, but he is more interested in the fact that Musk can demonstrate a vehicle that works.

Musk showed a Gen 2 bot last year. In the April earnings call, he said that his company could be sold outside of the US by the end of next year.

After the presentation, livestream footage showed people interacting with Optimus robots at tables and in crowds. Still, the robots weren’t doing much other than waving in the style of Astro Bot. There was a table of drinks — but the Optimus bot was not seen doing more than holding a cup of ice. One bot can play rock paper scissors and hand over gift bags at another table. And there was an enclosed gazebo with a bunch of dancing robots inside.

Musk: From mow lawns to babysitting future U.S. military installations – Some examples of cost-effective ways to save your kids

Musk gives examples of ways it can do anything from mowing your lawn to babysitting your kids. He said it will cost $20,000 to $30,000 “long term.”