Tesla has unveiled their long promised Cyber Cab

Tesla held an unveiling party at Warner Bro's Studios in Burbank California Thursday Night. As a Robotics Research Scientist, I can tell you that these events are a huge part of the annual cycle at robotics companies and research institutes. There are typically one or two big demos per year that are either closed company events presenting to VIPs or investors, or public events or trade shows where the company is showing off their tech. These shindigs are usually all-hands-on-deck developing features they intend to show off, and there are hundreds or thousands of scientists and engineers that make these demos possible who's necks the boss man is standing on to make these presentations. So I'm tipping my hat to all the nameless faceless heroes that made the Tesla We Robot event possible.

Now down to the nuts and bolts....

This event, like many Tesla puts on was really underwhelming in terms of products and capabilities. What they actually entailed seems to be: The Cyber Cab is not ready and is not going to be available for several years. The prototypes shown are just concept R&D vehicles and will likely be very different from any future product releases. Elon Musk thinks the Robo Taxi and Optimus robot will be available to anyone for $20,000 to $30,000 in a year or two. Elon flat out states their humanoid robot will be able to teach your children, mow the lawn, and actually do "anything you can think of." They are really proud of the fact their new Robo Van has no steering wheel but they fail to mention it also has no seatbelts... So that thing will be like a washing machine spin cycle filled with meat if it get's into an accident on the highway.

We're Off to See The Wizard

We often say in the robotics industry that a demonstration was "Wizard of Oz'ed" which, as you can probably guess, means that it was teleoperated or in some way demonstrated with tight guardrails to make it look like it has much more autonomous capability than it actually does.

The robot bartenders at this event were probably the most egregious Wizard of Oz'ing at the event. There are many videos surfacing of attendees talking to them and the responses are very obviously a teleoperator nearby. There was a shocking amount of intentional deception at this event.

If Elon keeps telling us he'll have full self-driving "next year" every year how many years will we take him seriously? He is also going to have fully autonomous robots in our homes by next year and people living on mars next year. I'm reminded of the scene in Snatch where every time they ask about the sausages they are two minutes away.

Now, will an autonomous cab be a good thing some day? Sure, but we need to see it is safe and effective before we start selling and using them. This technology is only fit for closed test track testing today. Waymo and Cruise are many years ahead of Tesla in terms of autonomous taxi capability.

I spent several years working on autonomous vehicles for the worlds number one automobile manufacturer and my opinion we already solved this problem with trains, light-rails, and even horses before that. There has probably been a trillion dollars invested in developing autonomous vehicle technology in the past 10 years and to date, not one dollar of profit has been made with them from any company. The money invested so far could have put state-of-the-art light rails in all the major cities of the United States. Or they could have put magnetic levitation bullet trains between all the major cities. Honestly, we don't need autonomous cars at all. We need efficient cities with great train systems.

These kinds of situations always bring to mind Jeff Goldblum's character in Jurassic Park. People are so preoccupied with whether they could, they never stop to think if they should. As a professional robotics research scientist, I don't think there is a need for autonomous vehicles or humanoid robots and the money being spent on them would certainly be better used elsewhere.