Elon Musk has shared a brand new video on Saturday that includes Optimus, the robotic Tesla has been engaged on since 2021. However anybody who tries to observe the video will instantly discover one thing bizarre. The clip of Optimus is so low high quality and pixelated that it appears prefer it was shot on a flip-phone from 20 years in the past.
The brand new video was posted within the early morning hours of Saturday and has been seen over 35 million times as of this writing. However the video seems to point out Optimus simply strolling round with out doing a lot of something. That might have been fairly spectacular around 2013 or so, because it’s comparatively tough to get machines to stroll like people, but it surely’s not fully clear why Musk would need the world to see Optimus strolling like this.
Replace, 3:58 p.m. ET: Sooner or later up to now half-hour or so Elon Musk’s video was swapped out to incorporate a better decision model. Curiously, tweets which have been edited will usually present a observe on the backside that claims a tweet has been edited and the time it occurred, however Musk’s tweet doesn’t point out something has been modified.
The screenshots under present a side-by-side of what the tweet seemed like earlier than it was modified to incorporate a better decision video.
We’ve reached out to Twitter to see if Musk has particular guidelines as proprietor of the social media platform and can replace this publish if we hear again. The remainder of this publish is being stored up for posterity.
Incremental technical achievements apart, why does this video look so horrible? We weren’t the one ones to note the bizarrely pixelated high quality, as loads of Musk followers made jokes concerning the blurriness.
“Was this filmed with a potato?” one consumer quipped.
“Similar photographer?” one other X consumer quipped with a photo of Bigfoot.
Tesla didn’t instantly reply to questions on this new video of Optimus emailed Saturday.
Musk unveiled Optimus with an unconventional presentation in the summertime of 2021 that actually felt just like the billionaire was determined to hype nearly something futuristic. Tesla’s AI Day that yr didn’t function an actual robotic, however relatively somebody wearing a white and black go well with transferring round like a stereotypical robotic earlier than starting to dance a jig.
Tesla’s robotic has made progress since that first jokey unveiling, however Optimus nonetheless has fairly a methods to go earlier than it might catch as much as essentially the most innovative robots of the 2020s. Atlas, a humanoid robotic made by Boston Dynamics, began studying pick itself up in 2016, standing on one leg that same year, doing backflips in 2017, and achieved parkour-style jumping in 2018.
And Atlas remains to be making progress in ways in which rival how people truly transfer. Final yr, the Atlas robotic confirmed off its skill to control its surroundings to navigate complex worksites.
Optimus has made enhancements because it was first introduced but it surely has fairly a methods to go if it needs to catch as much as an organization like Boston Dynamics. Arguably essentially the most spectacular factor we’ve seen Optimus do is fold laundry, however when you take an in depth take a look at the video, there was an individual standing simply off-screen mimicking the actions. And, frankly, that’s know-how that’s been doable since the 1960s.
Can Tesla develop a very autonomous robotic that may work as a family servant, simply as Musk has promised? Solely time will inform. However we’ve been ready on that model of the long run for over a century now. Robotics is tough. However we are able to actually maintain dreaming.
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