Tesla Demos Optimus Robot on Stage at AI Day Event [VIDEO]

Tesla on Friday held its second annual AI Day event, showing off the company’s latest leaps in Artificial Intelligence, automation, and computation.

During the event, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his team showed off the company’s first working prototype of ‘Optimus,’ a humanoid robot — reports Tesla North.

The Tesla Bot prototype, called “Bumble-Cee” (a play on the Transformers character “Bumblebee”), walked out on stage — on its own and entirely untethered — and waved to the crowd. This early prototype was built using off-the-shelf components and became functional in February 2022.

Tesla gave us a glimpse at what even this early prototype is capable of — moving boxes, doing some light work around a factory, and even watering plants. Talk about putting Amazon’s flopped “Astro” household robot and recently unveiled “Proteus” warehouse robot to shame.

Tesla then brought out the next version of Optimus, the one it hopes to put into production. This iteration sported a metal exoskeleton and looked much more presentable. Musk and the team noted that this build is still a few weeks away from walking, but it did manage to wave.

According to Tesla, the production build of Optimus is vertically integrated, equipped with Tesla-built actuators and the company’s own batteries instead of third-party components. Optimus comes with a 2.3 kWh battery and weighs 73 kg (160 lbs).

“The Optimus has two times the economic output [of people],” Musk said on stage. “Our goal is to make a useful humanoid robot as quickly as possible.”

Tesla is aiming for 200+ degrees of body freedom in the final production unit, with 11 degrees of freedom in the hands. In addition, the company said Optimus will be able to identify objects as humans can.

Musk and Co. noted that Tesla is designing Optimus with manufacturing in mind. The autonomous robot will be produced at scale in high volume, with Tesla eyeing “millions of units.”

Musk added that volume production will help drive down the price, with Optimus “probably” costing less than $20,000 USD at scale.

Tesla will first deploy Optimus to its own factories before making it available on the open market. Musk noted that Optimus is steadily nearing production, saying that it could go on sale in three to five years.

Tesla also shared some exciting news about its homegrown supercomputer, Dojo, during the event. You can check out a “supercut” of Tesla’s AI Day 2022 below:

YouTube video

Alternatively, you can watch the entire event below:

YouTube video

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