Elon Musk’s bold promise on ‘R2-D2’ robots

Elon Musk says you could be living the Star Wars life – literally – by the end of the decade.

Elon Musk says you could be living the Star Wars life -literally- by the end of the decade.

The eccentric billionaire is convinced his Tesla Optimus robot will be ready to hit households much sooner than most people and his work with his cutting edge car company is paving the way.

“I think humanoid robots will be the biggest product ever,” Musk told CNBC,

“The demand will be insatiable. Everyone’s going to want one. It’s like basically who wouldn’t want their own C-3PO or R2D2?”

When asked when this would happen, Musk replied: “2030, I think that’s a reasonable target.”

MORE: Trump declares war on ‘world’s worst car feature’

Elon Musk says you could be living the Star Wars life – literally – by the end of the decade. Picture: Getty

Tesla’s Full Self Driving cars have been wowing consumers in the US with their incredible capabilities, in a pointer to what is possible with the tech Musk is working on.

Via FSD, Tesla vehicles are able to sum up driving and traffic conditions and adapt accordingly, in many cases in the blink of an eye.

ROBOTS ARE CHILD’S PLAY

Musk indicated Optimus will begin from a similar base and will take time to learn their tasks. But that they will be able to learn quickly, in the same way an adult human or even a child does.

MORE: iPhone car coming to Australia

Tesla Full Self-Driving Hardware is paving the way for humanoid robots. Picture: Supplied

“It’s going to take a lot of resources and it’ll take time but there are certain threshold breakthroughs that we think we can achieve. If Optimus can watch videos and just like a human can learn from those videos.

“Right now we are training Optimus to do very primitive tasks, where it would say pick up an object or open a door and what we need to do is bootstrap that intelligence so you can have the basic functions. This is where it gets interesting.”

C-3PO and R2-D2 - coming to a home near you soon. Photo: Supplied.

OPTIMUS LOVES CARROTS

Musk said his robots will respond to a carrot approach.

“How does a child learn?” Musk asked.

“A child plays with toys, plays with blocks. At some point the child figures out how to put the triangle in the triangle hole and the circle in the circle hole. It keeps doing it until it works.

MORE: The Yank tank cutting Australia in two

Optimus is child’s play.

“They work it out by doing it over and over again and this the self play, once you have a lot of robots, you can self play. Which is that you put the robot in a room with toys and literally have the robot play.

“It will learn and you have the reward function. And you use that classic child’s toy. You put the circle in the circle the square in the square hole and the triangle in the triangle hole and keep doing it until it works. And the reward function is succeeding. There are no advances in AI needed to accomplish that now. It is just nature, it can happen.”

MORE: ‘Unless I die’: Musk slams Tesla critics

Originally published as Elon Musk’s bold promise on ‘R2-D2’ robots