- Elon Musk is not pleased with how the media has lined an accident involving his manufacturing facility’s robots.
- “Really shameful of the media to dredge up an harm from two years in the past,” Musk wrote on X.
- Musk mentioned the experiences falsely implied that the accident was attributable to his humanoid Optimus robots.
Elon Musk has slammed current media experiences of a robotic “assault” in a Tesla manufacturing facility in Austin.
“Really shameful of the media to dredge up an harm from two years in the past attributable to a easy industrial Kuka robotic arm (present in all factories) and suggest that it is because of Optimus now,” Musk wrote in an X publish on Wednesday.
The Tesla CEO was responding to an X consumer who’d shared a Day by day Mail report from Tuesday a couple of manufacturing facility robotic incident in 2021.
The Info had additionally lined the incident in a narrative revealed final month. Based on the outlet, two witnesses mentioned that an engineer was operating software program updates on the manufacturing facility’s robots when he was grabbed and pinned towards the floor by one of many machines.
The witnesses additionally mentioned that the engineer was left bleeding after the robotic had sunk its claws into his physique. The engineer finally escaped the robotic’s clutches when one other employee pressed the emergency cease button, per The Info.
Musk’s ire on the Day by day Mail’s publish, nevertheless, seems to be on the outlet’s framing of the accident. The Day by day Mail’s story used a thumbnail that includes Tesla’s humanoid Optimus robots — not the Kuka robotic arm that was concerned within the 2021 incident.
Musk’s protection of the Optimus robots will come as no shock as he has excessive hopes for them. When he unveiled them final yr, he mentioned the financial system might change into “quasi-infinite” if the Optimus robots had been able to guide labor.
“This implies a way forward for abundance. A future the place there is no such thing as a poverty, the place you would have no matter you need by way of services and products,” Musk mentioned then.
Security complaints, nevertheless, have lengthy dogged Musk’s Tesla factories. In 2020, California regulators mentioned Tesla had despatched them incomplete manufacturing facility harm experiences.
And it isn’t simply the US. Just lately, in April, Chinese language inspectors mentioned they wished to punish the corporate for security weaknesses, per Caixin International. Based on the report, a Tesla manufacturing facility employee in Shanghai died after getting crushed by manufacturing facility tools.
In October, Tesla rejected claims from a German union and the nation’s media shops that the Berlin Gigfactory lacked correct security provisions.
Representatives for Tesla and Kuka didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark from Enterprise Insider despatched exterior common enterprise hours.
