Tesla Announces Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

this just.. makes no sense. this doesn't play to Tesla's strengths or synergize with their existing R&D. Sensors for proprioceptive feedback are still immature, reinforcement learning for robotic motion is still in its infancy (Boston Dynamics did it the old fashioned way with differential equations and tons of work.) ...and you don't need any of that for cars, even with Autopilot. Turning steering wheels and accelerating is trivial compared to walking. Computer vision, sure, maybe, but that's a lot closer to solved than controlling a humanoid robot.

A picture of a person with a circuit board inside? That's what they have?

We'll see a model 5 years from now but you've got to give it to the guy. He certainly knows how to promote a company. P.T. Barnum would be proud.

So ... maybe they don't want to go for LIDAR (in their cars), because they wanted to build a humanoid robot anyway and felt that a LIDAR on a mobile platform's head is infeasible (?) - so they skipped the sensor fusion problem, and want to solve the harder problem first.

... and maybe go back to LIDAR later? Just guess work.