news

한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina

On August 20, relevant recruitment data showed thatTeslaHiring employees wearing motion capture suits,Virtual RealityHelmet to train human formrobotOptimus. The company providesHourly wageIt can go up to $48.

Willing to work for hours in a motion capture suit? Tesla, the US electric car maker, is paying up to $48 an hour for this position. In the past year, Tesla has hired dozens of people to train its humanoid robot Optimus, according to data on LinkedIn.

In 2021, Tesla CEO ElonMuskElon Musk unveiled for the first time plans to build a humanoid robot named Optimus Prime, which he said would eventually be able to do everything from factory work to nursing care.

In June, Tesla announced that it had deployed two Optimus Prime robots at one of its factories. It appears that Tesla has been hiring employees to work with these robots, which are still under development.

According to the description on Tesla's official website, the position is called "Data Collection Operator", which requires employees to wear motion capture suits and virtual reality helmets, walk along a predetermined route and complete designated tasks, and work more than seven hours a day. Employees not only need to collect data, but also analyze this information, write daily reports, and handle some minor tasks related to the equipment and its software.

In addition, the position has a clear height requirement for applicants, which must be between 1.70 and 1.80 meters. Christian Hubicki, a robotics expert at Florida A&M University, pointed out that Tesla may be looking for candidates who can not only fit this specific clothing, but also have a similar body shape to the robot. According to Musk, the robot is about 1.72 meters tall.

Tesla hopes to find people who can wear motion capture suits and virtual reality helmets for a long time. These people need to be able to withstand the discomfort and symptoms such as "virtual reality motion sickness" that may be caused by long-term use of the equipment.

According to the job posting, the full-time position would pay between $25.25 and $48 per hour, with multiple shifts available, including 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., 4 p.m. to 12:30 a.m., and 12 a.m. to 8:30 a.m.

Animesh Garg, a senior fellow at the VeeKnowledge Institute and a professor of robotics at Georgia Tech, said the work would likely involve workers wearing motion-capture suits to perform tasks to collect data, which would then be analyzed by data annotators to train artificial intelligence systems and potentially directly control humanoid robots.

Last year, Tesla's social media account Optimus Prime showed some of the work content of this position. In the video, an operator wearing a motion capture suit, tactile gloves and a virtual reality helmet was picking up objects, and Tesla Optimus Prime was performing the same action.

Tesla appeared to be hiring aggressively for the position earlier this year, with an analysis of LinkedIn data showing more than 50 people have held the role at various times over the past year.

Experts believe Tesla may be seeking to collect large amounts of data.

“It’s exactly the same thing they’re doing with self-driving technology, but instead of collecting data from vehicles, they’re paying people to come into a factory or workplace and do these tasks,” said Jonathan Aitken, a robotics expert at the University of Sheffield.

Garg believes that in order to train Optimus Prime to work in the Tesla factory, Tesla should aim to record hundreds of thousands to millions of hours of data, which will take a lot of time and money. "It's very difficult to mass-produce robots," he said, and the Tesla Optimus Prime robot may need to be custom assembled and constantly undergo new iterations.

“The amount of data collection you need could be as much as $500 million, and the question is, ‘Even if you do that, will you succeed?’ Because success is not guaranteed,” he added.

Aitken said that while the use of motion capture suits and teleoperation to train robots is not new, Tesla is one of the first companies to attempt to use this approach on such a large scale and for such a wide range of general-purpose tasks. "In manufacturing, we often have robots that are great at one specific task, but they are often not suitable for other tasks."

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.