The prototype of a humanoid robot that Musk revealed uses the company's artificial intelligence software as well as the sensors that power its advanced driver assist features. Musk acknowledged at the start of the presentation that they had a guy in a suit last year but promised something much more impressive today.
The first time it walked without a tether was on stage. Musk said they're aiming for a price between $20,000 and $30,000.
The back doors of the stage opened to reveal a dismantled Optimus that walked forward and performed a dance move. Musk said they wanted to keep it safe, not make too many moves on stage, and have it fall on its face. If you can, it's a good idea to avoid another Cybertruck sledgehammer incident.
The company showed a few clips of the robot doing other things. The prototype was fully assembled but not functional. The initial robot was developed in the last six months. They hope to get this done within the next few months or years.
Engineers hope to clear more design hurdles in the next few months.
It has a 2.3kWh battery pack and is powered by aTesla chip. Demonstrations focused on addressing the robot's joints, like its hands, wrists, or knees, showed how they processed data for each joint, then looked for the common areas in each design to find a method. Engineers say that the human-like hands will make them better suited for picking up objects of different shapes and sizes, holding a 20-point bag, and having a "precision grip" on small parts.
The autopilot software was moved from the car to the bot and retooled to work in the new environment. The motion captured people doing real-world tasks like lifting a box and then using inverse kinematics to repeat the movement. "online motion adaptation" is applied to make the tasks more flexible so that they can be manipulated to fit into an environment.
Musk said it would be a fundamental transformation for civilization. He says that Optimus has the potential of improvement of economic output.
At last year's Artificial Intelligence Day, Musk promised that the "Tesla Bot" would be "friendly" and "revolutionary" for the company.
The prototype will not look like the one shown at last year's event. The robot is the most important product development we're doing this year and Musk predicts that it will be more significant than the vehicle business over time.
Musk has said that future applications could include cooking, gardening, or even "catgirl" sex partners.
There were warnings against buying too much into Musk's claims. They've noted that other companies are further along in developing robots that are capable of walking, running, and jumping, but none are claiming to be close to replacing human labor.
It's anyone's guess as to whether a production-readyTeslaBot will ever see the light of day, since the company's history is filled with fanciful ideas that never panned out. The company is currently where it is because of Musk's will. The prototype version of the robot will bolster Musk's claims of being the world's biggest robotic company.
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