Tesla Unveils Prototype Humanoid Optimus Robot for Mass Production!

Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveils prototype humanoid Optimus robot & promises mass production

Tesla CEO Elon Musk presented a prototype humanoid Optimus robot that shares some artificial intelligence software and sensors with its cars' Autopilot driver assistance features. At the start of the Tesla AI Day 2022presentation, Musk unveils that they had "a guy in a suit" last year but guarantees something much more impressive today.

According to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, this prototype humanoid Optimus robot is capable to do more than what was presented live, but "the first time it operated without a tether was tonight on stage." Musk anticipates humanoid Optimus robot could hit a price of "probably less than $20,000" and after that, in a Q&A session, acknowledged that Tesla is excellent at building the artificial intelligence and the actuators necessary for robotics based on the experience of producing drive units for electric cars. Musk mentioned that would be very much helpful for it in getting capable robots into production and starting by testing them within its factories. He declared that the difference between Tesla's design and other "very impressive humanoid robot demonstrations" is that the Tesla Optimus robot is designed for mass production in the "millions" of units and is very capable. As he said that, a team of workers moved a non-walking prototype offstage behind him.

They acknowledged that the initial robot shown was developed in just the past six months. Discussing the hurdles, they have to deal with getting it from the prototype to a working design, they hope to "get this done within the next coming months… or years." It carries a 2.3kWh battery pack, runs on a Tesla SoC, and contains Wi-Fi and LTE connectivity. Demonstrations concentrated on addressing the robot's joints, such as its hands, wrists, or knees, exhibited how they processed data for each joint, then looked for the common areas in each design to find a method using only six different actuators. The human-like hands are a "Biologically Inspired Design" which according to engineers will make them more suitable for picking up objects of various shapes and sizes, holding a 20-point bag, and containing a "precision grip" on small parts.

Tesla's Autopilot software was advanced from its cars to the bot and retooled to process in the new body and environment. Tesla motion seized people performing real-world tasks like lifting a box and then using inverse kinematics, repeating the movements using the Optimus robot. Then "online motion adaptation" is used to make it so these tasks aren't so rigid and can be manipulated to take into account an unstructured environment. "It will be an elementary transformation for civilization as we know it," said Elon Musk. He further added that the Optimus robot has the potential of "two orders of magnitude" of potential improvement of economic output.

Musk first announced the "Tesla Bot" at previous year's AI Day, promising it would be "friendly" and potentially revolutionize the company's assembly line and manufacturing business. Musk had warned his fans not to expect the prototype to look like the glossy black-and-white rendering first presented at the previous year's event. But there's been no shortage of hype, with Musk calling the robot "the most important product development we're doing this year" and predicting that it will have the potential to be "more significant than the vehicle business over time."