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Elon Musk’s Tesla is seeking workers to capture data that will be utilized to train its upcoming “Optimus” humanoid robot.
The company recently posted a new job opening for a “Data Collection Operator, Tesla Bot” on its website, with responsibilities that include collecting, helping with engineering requests, and providing equipment feedback for up to $48 an hour alongside benefits.
The role chiefly requires individuals to walk more than seven hours a day while wearing a sensor-laden bodysuit for motion capture and lifting weights up to 30 pounds (approximately 14kg). The workers will also be required to wear virtual reality headsets for extended periods of time while performing specific body movements as needed to train the bots. This is a big part of training the underlying artificial intelligence that will drive these robots once they are unleashed in unsupervised environments.
Tesla also limits the range of height of the human operators to between 5 feet 7 inches and 5 feet 11 inches. This is presumably to ensure smoother calibration for the Tesla bot that has previously been publicized to be 5 feet 8 inches in height. The individuals should have control over fine body movements, and should be able to “stand, sit, walk, stoop, bend, reach, crouch, and twist throughout the day,” the listing notes.
The company previously shared a video of what the training work entails:
The opening is for Palo Alto, California, which has been home to Tesla’s engineering headquarters since February 2023, but candidates are expected to travel with the equipment to various other “collection sites.” Notably, the opening also indicates requirement for “daily regional driving,” suggesting they may also be tasked to drive Tesla vehicles in and around the manufacturing units and service centers.
Elon Musk has big plans for the Tesla Optimus robot and recently underlined a scenario where humans would be able to offload memories onto a cloud and then to a robot. The company’s objective is to make general purpose, bi-pedal robots that can take over tasks that are unsafe, repetitive, or boring to humans. The most immediate use case, however, is to replace workers in its factories to cut costs and make up for losses due to the receding demand for Tesla’s vehicles.
Optimuspic.twitter.com/nbRohLQ7RH
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 13, 2023
Musk had previously shared a preview of the Tesla Optimus robot’s capabilities. While it can walk, squat, place eggs carefully in a boiler, and even wiggle to some techno beats, it is still seemingly less dexterous than competitors such as Boston Dynamics. Earlier this year, he informed investors — and later iterated the same through a post on X — that the robot will be ready for operations by the end of 2025 and ready for sale in high volumes to other companies starting 2026.
