As Tesla prepares to roll out its RoboTaxi service in the coming years, it appears the company is putting together a team for teleoperations. A recent job listing reveals that Tesla is hiring a software engineer to help develop a teleoperation system that will enable human operators to remotely access and control the company’s upcoming RoboTaxis and humanoid robots.
The Palo Alto-based software engineer will be responsible for "defining requirements, making key design choices, and implementing software integration for a custom teleoperation system."
The job listing leaves it unclear whether Tesla is enhancing an existing teleoperations team or establishing one from scratch, but the presence of such a role is significant for two key reasons. First, it suggests Tesla may be taking tangible steps toward deploying its RoboTaxis on public roads.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has repeatedly emphasized the company’s ability to achieve full autonomy through advanced neural network training and camera-based perception, without human intervention. Musk has also long promised that Tesla would achieve this goal by now. In 2019, the billionaire executive predicted that by 2020, Tesla would have over a million RoboTaxis on the road.
In the realm of autonomous vehicles, teleoperation is widely viewed as an essential component for enabling self-driving cars to navigate real-world conditions. Companies like Waymo, which operates commercial autonomous ride-hailing services in several U.S. cities, already utilize teleoperation systems to manage challenges such as construction zones, accidents, and hardware malfunctions.
Decisions made by remote operators also provide valuable training data for Level 4 autonomous operations.
(SAE defines L4 autonomy as a system that can drive itself in specific conditions without the need for human intervention.)
Tesla is not entirely new to teleops. During its "We, Robot" event in October, the automaker relied on remote operators to control its Optimus bots, entertaining guests with drinks and fun—a fact not disclosed to attendees at the time. However, the requirements for remotely operating RoboTaxis will be different.
For instance, the user interface and controls for RoboTaxis will likely mirror driving controls and include features like real-time mapping and decision-making support for complex scenarios. In contrast, with robots, the interface will depend on the specific task. These RoboTaxis will demand enhanced communication capabilities across expansive areas, and teleoperators will need to meticulously record their remote interventions for thorough analysis after any incidents.
Last month, Tesla unveiled its RoboTaxi prototype—a CyberCab designed without a steering wheel or pedals and capable of carrying two passengers. At the event, Musk said Tesla would start production on the vehicle in 2026 or 2027, a timeline to be taken with a grain of salt given the executive’s history of over-promising. In 2022, he had said he expected Tesla to begin mass production of RoboTaxis that year.
Musk also mentioned hopes to launch a service by 2025 that allows people to hail self-driving Teslas in California and Texas, a service Tesla claims to be already testing with employees in the Bay Area.
It remains unclear whether Tesla’s rapidly expanding teleoperation team will be responsible solely for purpose-built RoboTaxis or also for Tesla vehicles currently owned by the public. Musk has claimed for years that Tesla vehicles with existing hardware would one day be capable of fully autonomous driving with just an over-the-air software update, but he has since walked back those claims.
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