Tesla demonstrates robot’s “milestone” achievement: steadily catching a tennis ball
Source: backchina.com
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Got a new hand for Black Friday pic.twitter.com/x3gQrsbYAQ
— Tesla Optimus (@Tesla_Optimus) November 28, 2024
News on November 29 (Editor Song Ziqiao) On November 28, local time, the official account of Tesla Robot released a new update: new hands were prepared to welcome Black Friday. In the video, Optimus steadily catches the tennis ball thrown in the direction and puts it down, and his fingers can be bent relatively flexibly.
Dexterity is the most eye-catching feature of Tesla’s second-generation Optimus. Tesla Optimus engineer Milan Kovac calls the latest display of dexterous hands “landmark achievement”。
According to him, compared with the previous generation of products,This hand/forearm has double the degrees of freedom (22 degrees of freedom on the hand and 3 degrees of freedom on the wrist/forearm). Little K Note: The human hand is generally considered to have 27 degrees of freedom. The higher the degree of freedom of the hand, the more complex and precise movements it can make.
Kovac said that the above video was completed in real time in the laboratory through remote operation, and Tesla will soon build a robot equipped with new dexterous hands.
In addition, the team still has some work to complete before the end of the year, especially around expanding tactile sensing integration (the new generation of hands covers a much larger surface area than the previous generation) and enabling more refined control through tendons. The team is also looking at ways to reduce the weight of the forearm as all the drive gear has been moved to the forearm, which adds to its weight. An interesting challenge is how to provide a protective layer that is soft/compliant enough for the fingers and palm without compromising tactile sensing.
Musk responded under his post: “Great job to the Optimus team.”
The dexterous hand with 22 degrees of freedom “comes out after being called upon”
Optimus’ previous generation dexterity hand included 11 degrees of freedomalso focusing on the flexibility of the forearm. Compared with the first-generation Optimus prototype, which was difficult to perform simple operating tasks, the Optimus equipped with 11 degrees of freedom dexterous hands can complete tasks such as folding shirts and sorting items in factories.
The dexterous hand with 22 degrees of freedom “comes out only after being called upon”. Previously in May, the Optimus team released a progress video of Optimus, in which the robot was sorting batteries and walking around the office. Musk left a message below the video,It was revealed for the first time that Optimus’ hands will soon have 22 degrees of freedom.
At Tesla’s June shareholder meeting, Musk reiterated Tesla’s goals (on April 23, 2024, during the first quarter earnings call, Musk said that Tesla expected that by the end of this year, the Optimus device would Perform a series of useful tasks in the factory, and the company aims to sell these robots externally before the end of 2025), that is, it plans to start small batch trial production of Optimus robots from the end of 2024, and is expected to produce thousands to 10,000 units throughout 2025. For internal scene use and training,At the same time, he once again mentioned the key improvement of Optimus – the hand will have 22 degrees of freedom, “It can play the piano and even the guitar.”
At Tesla’s “werobot” conference in October, the 22-degree-of-freedom dexterous hand made its debut, demonstrating a new posture of abduction/adduction on the basis of flexion/extension. The dexterous hand’s wire-driven structure is eye-catching, the actuator is externally placed in the forearm, and the wrist can be flexibly rotated.
CITIC Securities said this is consistent with its expectations for Tesla’s clever use of the “core cup + screw + rope drive” solution. The 22 degrees of freedom are 4 degrees of freedom for each of the 5 fingers and 2 degrees of freedom for the wrist, which imitates the structure of the lowermost joint of the human finger with more than 1 degree of freedom to the greatest extent.
Dexterous hands are the core components of humanoid robots. Domestic and foreign companies are actively self-developed
Dexterous hands are now one of the core components of humanoid robots. Mainstream humanoid robot manufacturers tend to develop them themselves, such as Tesla (Optimus), Apptronik (Apollo), Walker S, Zhiyuan (Expedition A1) ), Sanctuary AI (Phoenix), etc.
A Huaan Securities research report pointed out that the performance and cost of a dexterous hand are jointly affected by its three core components – drive, transmission and sensing device. With the advancement of robotics technology, the degree of freedom of dexterous hands has been upgraded and accelerated, and it is increasingly developing towards high integration and intelligence. According to incomplete statistics from the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily:
On October 16, information from the State Intellectual Property Office showed that Zhiyuan Robot had applied for a patent titled “Dexterous Thumb, Dexterous Hand and Robot” in June this year. The patent abstract shows that this application relates to the field of robotics technology, specifically a dexterous thumb, a dexterous hand and a robot, which solves the problem that a dexterous thumb with three degrees of freedom cannot take into account joint decoupling and size at the same time. It is worth mentioning that the new products released by Zhiyuan Robot in August have 19 degrees of freedom for dexterous hands, of which the active degrees of freedom have increased from 6 in the previous generation to 12.
In the first half of this year, Xingdong Era launched its self-developed dexterous hand Xhand, which has 12 active degrees of freedom, adopts a full drive solution, and is equipped with tactile sensors on the fingertips.
Figure AI released the second-generation humanoid robot Figure02 in August this year, equipped with a fourth-generation manipulator. According to public information on its official website, Figure02’s dexterous hand has 16 degrees of freedom, which is said to “have a load capacity equivalent to that of humans and can grasp 25 kg of objects.”
1X Technologies (hereinafter referred to as “1X”), a start-up invested by OpenAI, launched a beta version of NEO, a humanoid robot designed for home use in early September this year. The hands have 20 degrees of freedom and can lift weights more than twice their own body weight. object.
Sinolink Securities previously released a research report stating that the changes in Tesla’s third-generation dexterous hand compared to the second generation are: (1) The hand has increased degrees of freedom, from 11 to 22, so the number of corresponding motors will increase. It may be increased from the original 6 to 13~17; (2) The driver loading position is changed from the hand to the wrist.
Guojin Securities said that based on functionality and long-term goals, the development of dexterous hands in the direction of human hands is the general trend. Taking Tesla’s dexterous hand as an example, the organization analyzed the elastic links in the industrial chain brought about by the increased degree of freedom:
In terms of driving devices, it is expected that coreless motors and brushless cogging motors will become the mainstream. Assuming that one hand uses about 13 to 17 units, the current value of both hands is 34,000 to 153,000 yuan;
As for the transmission device, it is currently at a critical time point for switching from tendons to screws. Assuming that one hand uses 13 to 17 sets, the current value of both hands is 55,000 to 130,000 yuan;
In terms of sensor devices, the tactile sensor is the most valuable link. It uses about 5 sets in one hand and is worth about 1,351 yuan in both hands.
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