Tesla is hiring employees to help train its humanoid robot Optimus by wearing motion capture suits. The position, called a "data acquisition operator," pays up to $48 an hour and requires employees to walk more than seven hours a day, carry up to 30 pounds, and wear a VR headset for long periods of time.
Tesla plans to use this large-scale motion capture method to teach Optimus how to perform human-like movements.
Employees must also be between 5-foot-7 and 5-foot-11 in height — which is probably close to the 5-foot-8 height range that Optimus expects.
Tesla robot trainer
Tesla plans to teach Optimus how to perform human-like movements through this large-scale motion capture method. However, experts point out that getting Optimus fully ready to work in Tesla factories may require millions of hours of data, with an estimated cost of up to $500 million, and there is still no guarantee of success. At present, despite Elon Musk's promise to start producing "truly useful" robots next year, Optimus does not seem to be closer to completion than the products of Boston Dynamics and other competitors.
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Motion capture is a common and often cost-effective way to train robots to perform human-like movements, but Tesla is one of the first companies to apply the technology on a large scale. Although some videos online show Optimus performing various tasks, Animesh Garg, a senior researcher at Nvidia Research, told Business Insider that Optimus may need millions of hours of data training before it is fully ready to work in Tesla's factories.
"The amount of data collection you need could easily be half a billion dollars, and the real question is, 'Even if you do this, will it work?' Because success is not guaranteed," Garg said.
This is typical for humanoid robots and the AI systems they run, which require a lot of painstaking training. Despite Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s promise to produce a “truly useful” robot next year (a timeline he admits is mostly guesswork), Optimus doesn’t appear to be any closer to completion than rivals like Boston Dynamics, Figure, and Apptronik.
