Elon Musk reveals humanoid robot prototype at Tesla AI Day

Picture Courtesy: Tesla

Billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed a humanoid robot prototype, known as the Tesla Bot or Optimus at Tesla’s AI day 2022. Elon Musk also predicted that the electric vehicle maker would be able to produce millions of them and sell them for under $20,000 - less than a third of the price of a Model Y.

Musk said, “There's still a lot of work to be done to refine Optimus and prove it,” The prototype walked out to wave at the crowd on Friday, and Tesla showed a video of it doing simple tasks, such as watering plants, carrying boxes and lifting metal bars at a production station at the company's California plant.

Elon Musk said that the current humanoid robots are “missing a brain” – and the ability to solve problems on their own. By contrast, he said, Optimus would be an "extremely capable robot" that Tesla would aim to produce in the millions. He said he expected it would cost less than $20,000.

The existing Humanoid robots developed by Toyota and Honda are capable of doing complicated things like shooting a basketball, and production robots from ABB and others are a mainstay of auto manufacturing. The prototype had a 2.3-kWh battery pack carried in its torso, a chip system and actuators to drive its limbs. The robot is designed to weigh 73 kg.

The initial reactions on Twitter were positive, focusing on the speed of Tesla's development effort since August last year, when Tesla announced its project with a stunt that had a person in a white suit simulate a humanoid robot.