2024: The Year of Robotics? Musk Supports Prediction of Billions of Humanoid Robots as Industry Evolves

Mecho，2024-9-11

Musk supports the bold prediction that in 20 years there will be about 1 billion humanoid robots on Earth.

In a social media post, David Holtz, founder of artificial intelligence research lab Midjourney, wrote: “It’s reasonable to expect that in the 2140s, there will be a billion humanoid robots on Earth. And by the 2160s, there will be 100 billion robots (mostly alien) throughout the solar system.”

Musk responded, “This could very well be a reality, but only if the bedrock of civilization is impregnable.”

In October 2023, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) issued the “Guidelines for the Innovative Development of Humanoid Robots”, which positioned humanoid robots as a “disruptive product that integrates advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, high-end manufacturing, and new materials, and is expected to follow computers, smartphones, and new energy vehicles, which will profoundly change the way of human production and life, and reshape the pattern of global industrial development. “.

Numerous fields have begun to try to use AI technology to build the corresponding robots, but the progress is also uneven, and the application process is a continuous process of elimination of the fittest, In the next ten years, AI robots will be in a large number of industry footholds, and through the update, the experience will continue to be optimized.

In the past decade, the most successful AI robotics in the field of intelligent manufacturing, a large number of factories repetitive labor has been replaced by machines to achieve unattended factories, in the field of repetitive production and manufacturing, intelligent robots have a natural advantage over workers, the machine makes fewer mistakes, solves the problem of seasonal labor difficulties, as well as the problem of 7X24-hour uninterrupted production, with a great advantage of scale and efficiency. The robot has the advantage of scale and efficiency.

Boston Dynamics Atlas Humanoid Robot: The most advanced humanoid robot available today is the Atlas Humanoid Robot, a bipedal robot developed primarily by Boston Dynamics, which is intended for search and rescue missions. It can walk and climb on a wide variety of complex terrain, uses hydraulic drives and electric pumps, and has 28 degrees of freedom and two vision systems.

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Since its debut in 2013, the Atlas humanoid robot has gone through some improvements and upgrades, reducing its height from 1.8 meters to 1.75 meters, its weight from 150 kilograms to 82 kilograms, and its appearance to be more compact and fluid. It can perform a variety of difficult movements, such as vertical jumps, hurdles, backflips, parkour, etc., as well as simple interaction and collaboration with humans.

Tesla Humanoid Robot Prototype Optimus: On September 30, 2022, Tesla Artificial Intelligence Day opened in Palo Alto, California, USA, and Tesla’s humanoid robot prototype Optimus was unveiled for the first time. Optimus, Tesla’s humanoid robot prototype, was unveiled for the first time, involving core technologies such as motion control, AI intelligence, chips, motors, batteries, gearboxes, vision, and so on.

On January 16, 2024, Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted a compelling video on social media platform X showing the company’s newly developed second-generation humanoid robot, Optimus Prime, performing the task of folding laundry. The demonstration not only highlights the high flexibility of Optimus Prime but also signals Tesla’s continued innovation in the field of artificial intelligence.

On the evening of January 30, 2024, Musk posted a video of Tesla’s Optimus Prime humanoid robot walking on the social media platform X, with the caption “Going for a walk with Optimus”. In the video, the humanoid robot’s gait is light and natural, and its two robotic arms can follow the pace of swinging, quite a bit of human characteristics.

Xiaomi’s humanoid robot “Tie Da”: In 2022, Xiaomi’s fall launch event unveiled the company’s first full-size humanoid bionic robot “CyberOne”, which is 1.77 meters tall, weighs 52kg, and has the internal name “TieDa”.

Mobile ALOHA Robotics, Stanford University: In January 2024, Mobile ALOHA demonstrated the potential of robotics for a variety of application scenarios through 50 demonstrations in which the robot was able to independently perform some complex tasks, including sautéing shrimp, cleaning pots and pans, and preparing a variety of delicious dishes for a full banquet. The robot was designed at a cost of only $32,000 and the project is entirely open source, opening up new possibilities in the field of robotics.

The robotics industry is in a state of flux! There’s a Stanford robot showing off its culinary skills by cooking a “full banquet”, a Tesla Optimus Prime acting as a nanny and folding T-shirts into “tofu blocks”, and two robots from two startups competing in a coffee-making contest. OpenAI-backed robotics company 1X has just announced a $500 million funding round, while Figure has announced that its robots have been deployed at a BMW car factory.

The robot growth path is not all smooth sailing, a variety of humanoid robot demonstrations also have unsatisfactory places, for example: for the Stanford Mobile ALOHA team released the video there were also “overturned” places, broke the red wine glass, the stir-frying pan overturned, etc., in fact, this can not be regarded as an “overturned” but the inevitable experience behind the success of the gradual growth in the mistakes. This can not be regarded as a “rollover”, but rather the inevitable experience behind the success, and gradually growing up in one mistake after another.

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Mobile ALOHA has exploded in popularity mainly because it has galvanized expectations for the use of robots in domestic scenarios. On a technical level, its biggest contribution is the finesse of the physical operations. Cooking, watering flowers, doing laundry ……Mobile ALOHA demonstrates the ability to solve these menial tasks required for a robot to enter the home.

Autonomous cooking, cleaning, and folding clothes robots are certainly eye-catching but calm down and look again, we will find that these robots still need a human remote control, in a fully autonomous mode is the performance of the “clumsiness”, from the real intelligence there is still a certain distance. Moreover, the cost of humanoid robots is still very high, and the cost of humanoid robots that can accomplish certain tasks is in the range of tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Therefore, in 2024, humanoid robots will further evolve and mature and will begin to pilot applications in some cost-sensitive scenarios.

However, humanoid robots inspire the industry to warm up to robotics, which will lead to the accelerated adoption of AI robots in all industries, and 2024 will be the year when robotics will start to explode, second in importance only to large-scale language modeling (LLM).

The scenes where AI robots land are mainly focused on simple repetitive and relatively controllable tasks. One is the manufacturing scene, which contains a large number of auxiliary, relatively simple work; the second is the warehousing and logistics scene, including sorting, handling, and other repetitive physical labor; the third is a dangerous scene, such as nuclear power plants, chemical factories, military factories and other places of patrol inspection