Tesla’s Optimus Robot

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In terms of Tesla, we will all think of their electric cars and it’s fair to say that Tesla has greatly accelerated the emergence of sustainable energy. Before Tesla, no one made electric cars. And thanks to Tesla, nearly every major car company in the world is now producing electric vehicles. However, there’s still a long way to go for the world to transition to a sustainable energy economy.

Do you know Tesla has also been working on its Optimus robot for a year now. Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled the Optimus humanoid robot at AI Day on 30 September 2022. In a brief demo, the robot walked, waved, and danced on stage. From a guy in a suit to demonstrate Elon Musk’s vision to a working prototype, with hopes of a production model on the way. Tesla announced that the robot would cost less than their cars, at around $20,000 USD (~35,000 NZD). The Tesla’s AI day demo showed the robot waving at the crowd, watering plants, and helping move metal bars at one of Tesla’s Gigafactory.

However, Elon Musk has been criticized for making optimistic remarks and overestimating his technology. For his Model 3 launch, for example, there was a shortage of batteries which delayed the widespread launch of the model three by 1-2 years. His so-called Robo-Taxi, a fully autonomous taxi announced in 2019, and set for deployment in 2020, is still nowhere to be seen. Nevertheless, the vast successes of the delayed model 3 and autonomous driving shifted tesla from an automotive company into a technology company. With the mass amount of data collected by teslas and billions of kilometres of roads recorded, and having that turn into autonomous driving, it is not surprising that they are going into autonomous robot manufacturing.

Musk has said the bots could ‘eventually replace factory workers and even serve as caregivers. Will Optimus revolutionize the work environment? Will it ever reach production? Will it end up like the terminator movies? If robots become as popular as their cars, will it make us better off? Only time will tell.