[aniken]

I am curious, if they indeed used first principle thinking in order to design a robot that has to be able to replace human labor / jobs, why the robot needs to have 28 actuators and look and function exactly like a humanoid? It seems like copying exact human form, mobility, and movement would almost be arbitrary, and not really necessary. Anyone else have an informed idea as to why that wanted to so precisely copy the human form and movement?

Most robotics as far as I understand are designed to be specific to a set of tasks, and the design is optimized around that, thus no other industrial robots look exactly like humans, as far as I am aware. Are they being too ambitious, and romantic, in trying to design a robot that does too much while looking like a human?

[tim333]

I guess it's designed to fit in environments designed for humans like homes and offices.

Probably there is a bit of "too ambitious, and romantic" going on too.

I see their reasoning as something like that they have a lot of batteries motors processors and AI software lying around from doing cars. It would be kinda fun for a few engineers to try to put those bits in humanoid robot form. Who knows maybe it'll work, maybe it'll help the stock price. There isn't that much cost as they had most of the resources already.