Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk on Sunday dismissed an innovation from Japan to bind engineered skin to humanoid robots allowing for it to self-heal like the cyborg in the 1984 sci-fi movie The Terminator.
What Happened: “Pointless,” Musk wrote in response to an X user who flagged the innovation from the University of Tokyo. The University said in a statement last month that the innovation, developed by a team led by Professor Shoji Takeuchi, allows for self-healing in robots, among other things.
Musk’s Tesla is already developing a humanoid robot by the name of Optimus which resembles a human with moving hands capable of performing tasks around a factory. The robot, however, has no skin.
Two Optimus bots are currently employed in Tesla’s Fremont factory, taking cells off the end of the production line and placing them in containers, Musk confirmed in early June.
Why It Matters: During Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting last month, Musk said that there will be at least one humanoid robot for every person in the world in the future, implying a total humanoid robot population of at least 10 billion or more, of which the EV company will have a significant share.
"While autonomous vehicle is a $5-$7 trillion market cap situation, Optimus is a $25 trillion market cap situation," Musk, who is known to over-hype his company's products, then said. The CEO himself admitted that he is "pathologically optimistic" but delivers in the end.
Following a major hardware revision by the end of this year or early next year, Tesla expects to commence limited production of the Optimus to work in its factories and test its capabilities, the CEO added.
Last week, Musk also considered making a robot resembling TARS from the Christopher Nolan movie Interstellar, in addition to its humanoid robot Optimus.
"Maybe Tesla should built it. Would be so cute," Musk wrote on X in response to a video of a functional, walking TARS replica.
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