Tesla Inc. TSLA AI Day 2022 kicked off at 09:15 p.m. ET on Friday.
The event was live-streamed on the Tesla website and notable updates were related to the Optimus Tesla bot and the full self-driving software.
CEO Elon Musk was hoping to use the event to hire the best AI talent who could drive innovation in that arena.
Find Benzinga’s detailed preview of the event here on what to expect.
The odd timing of the event has left Tesla bulls excited.
“No other company holds an event on a Friday night. I love it. Another example of Elon’s first principles approach,” Loup Funds’ Gene Munster said in a tweet.
Here were our live updates as the event unfolded:
09:10 p.m. EDT: The event is live and looks like it is a sold-out one; with over 30,000 watching as it is just getting started. Techno music is being played, accompanied by visuals of some funky patterns that suit the theme of the event.
09:15 p.m. EDT: Alright, Musk is on stage and we are getting started — with robotic hands in the background hinting at Optimus.
09:20 p.m. EDT: Musk gets started with a reference to Optimus and reminds people that Tesla is a public company. He jestingly remarks even he is not immune to firing, especially if he goes crazy. Musk says AI, Autopilot, Dojo and a 'long' question & answers session on the agenda — folks welcome to ask existential or technical questions — whatever floats their boat.
09:22 p.m. EDT: Tesla bot is on stage — a real one, a sleek looking one! It’s waving to the crowd now. So, we do have a prototype!
09:25 p.m. EDT: Musk says the bot can do more than what it's doing on stage. A video showing its other functionalities is presented, where the bot is seen working at the Fremont factory, watering plants among other things. Musk says the humanoid can identify objects. A bot with Tesla-designed actuators — Musk says it would be ready to walk in a few weeks.
09:30 p.m. EDT: Optimus can move fingers. The goal is to make it useful, Musk says. It is "extremely useful" and made in volume, probably in volumes. So, could cost less, about $20,000, according to Tesla.
09:33 p.m. EDT: Musk appreciates the team for doing a wonderful job but says still a lot of improvements to be made. He is appealing to talent to join the company as it seeks to "do the right thing."
09:35 p.m. EDT: Musk gives his vision for the economy — a future of abundance, with no poverty. A fundamental transformation that promises safety.
He repeats why Tesla remains is a public company, giving control to people. The public can influence Tesla’s policies and actions.
09:40 p.m. EDT: After the pitch to talent, another Tesla team member walks the audience through the development timeline of the Tesla bot.
On power consumption of bot, 100W sitting, 500W for brisk walking, and it weighs 73 kg. Degrees of freedom is at above 200.
Tesla shows Optimus with actuators. The company is working on optimizing costs, reducing wiring in extremities and centralizing power distribution.
The battery pack is at the torso of the bot — charing, power distribution all at one place. Leveraging the existing Tesla supply chain for it, the bot is going to do everything a human brain does. Support communication is wireless.
09:45 p.m. EDT: Malcolm Burgess, Manager, Vehicle Dynamics and Concept Structures at Tesla, now on stage showcases how Optimus is immune to injury in the wake of a falling. The bot is made with materials such as titanium that are not stiff.
Tesla has taken inspiration from biology for the bot’s movement. Most important things from a design perspective are energy and mass. Tesla has carried its experience from car to robots, Burgess says.
09:50 p.m. EDT: The bot having 28 actuators allows high-level activity like walking and climbing stairs. An actuator is able to lift a halftone, 9-foot piano, a video shows.
On hand design: Bot has five fingers. The real utility is in factories for lifting objects. Six actuators and 11 degrees of freedom and adaptive grasp and non-back drivable fingers for the bot.
09:55 p.m. EDT: We are moving from robot on wheels to robot on legs, say Tesla. Video showcases the locomotion of the robot.
10:00 p.m. EDT: Tesla Humanoid Robotics Engineer Felix Sygulla talks about walking and aspects of engineering challenges involved in this action.
Controls are very complex, he says. Measuring reality and adding corrections to the behavior of the robot is important.
10:08 p.m. EDT: That’s all on Optimus. Now, it is over to Tesla Director for Autopilot Software Ashok Elluswamy for FSD updates.
Elluswamy says every Tesla built over the years has the hardware for self-driving and the company has been striving to improve software to achieve higher levels of autonomy.
The company has gone from 2,000 cars running FSD to 160,000 customers in a year, Elluswamy says. About 75,000 neural network models run each year, the pace of innovation is progressing.
10: 15 p.m. EDT: FSD Beta Software is "quite capable" of driving the car, he says, including stopping for traffic lights and stop signs, negotiating with objects at intersections and making turns and so on. Tesla showcases a video on how Tesla deals with traffic and pedestrians at the intersections.
10: 20 p.m. EDT: Tesla analyst Gene Munster on rising FSD customers says, "My guess is there are just under [two million Tesla vehicles] on the road that can run FSD, suggesting about 10% uptake. Hard to read too much into that uptake. I bet most are geeks who got FSD to play with the tech."
10:25 p.m. EDT: Tesla explains model behind how FSD makes a turn decision.
10:38 p.m. EDT: Musk tweets, "the point of AI Day is to show the immense depth [and] breadth of Tesla in AI, compute hardware & robotics." Prominent Tesla influencer Sawyer Merritt says the event shows "people calling Tesla 'just an automaker' have no damn clue."
Merritt's main takeaway from the event is that "Optimus is farther along than most expected and they are very serious about it. The progress [over ]the last [eight] months is incredible."
10:50 p.m. EDT: While Tesla engineers show off the technical details behind its self-driving software, have a sneak-peak at the company's Dojo supercomputer!
11:00 p.m. EDT: It's time to get Dojo supercomputer updates from Dojo Project lead Ganesh Venkataramanan and Tesla director Peter Bannon.
11:05 p.m. EDT: Tesla is a hardcore tech company, Bannon says, as he gives some background on Dojo. No limits philosophy was the guiding point for Dojo, Venkataramanan says.
11:09 p.m. EDT: Dojo Principal System Engineer Bill Chang says vision for the supercomuter is to build a single unified accelerator, "a very large one."
11:10 p.m. EDT: Musk tweets that "naturally, there will be a catgirl version of our Optimus robot." He shares a photo of him standing alongside the bot prototype.
11:13 p.m. EDT: The coefficient of thermal expansion is important. So, Tesla worked with vendors to deliver power solutions. CTE was reduced by over 50%, and Dojo met performance three times over initial expansion, says Chang. He adds, solving density at every level is key to achieving performance.
11:20 p.m. EDT: Tesla Principal Engineer Rajiv Kurian shares images of Cybertruck on Mars generated by stable diffusion running on Dojo — He quips: looks like it still has a long way to go before matching the Tesla design team.
11:30 p.m. EDT: Musk closes the presentation, by outlining Tesla's plan for the humanoid. "Our goal with Optimus is to have a robot that is maximally useful as quickly as possible."
11:35 p.m. EDT: The floor is now open for questions from the audience. This is it for Benzinga's live coverage of the event. There will be more stories coming based on key takeaways from the presentation and the question and answers alongside analyst reactions! Stay tuned at Benzinga home page.
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