On Friday, Elon Musk unveiled prototypes of his robot – named ‘Optimus’, lol – at Tesla’s AI Day 2022 event.
People were shown a video of Optimus performing simple tasks, such as watering plants, carrying boxes and lifting metal bars, and treated to a live demonstration of Optimus in action.
Even Musk himself seemed to preempt how underwhelming the whole thing would be and prefaced the demo with a disclaimer.
“I do want to set some expectations with respect to our Optimus robot,” he said. “As you know, last year it was just a person in a robot suit. But, we've come a long way, and it’s… compared to that, it's going to be very impressive.”
Apparently, Musk’s idea of ‘very impressive’ is a robot staggering around a stage looking like it’s simultaneously shat itself and taken one too many bumps of ket. Many robotics experts have noted that other companies are much further along in developing robots that can not only walk, but also run and jump.
Musk later said their one target for the demo was that they “just didn’t want it to fall on its face”. Always good to see that the sixth most valuable company in the world is aiming high!
Musk said the robots would be marketed to the public for “probably less than $20,000” (£17,900), and be available in three to five years.
You can watch Optimus do his thing below!