It feels so good seeing Elon Musk’s name in the news without ‘insert Twitter controversy here’ following it. This time, it’s because of the “Optimus” not-Prime AI robot unveiling at Tesla’s 2022 AI Day, which took place yesterday.
Last year, we got a look at some guy in a suit, impersonating the ‘Tesla bot’. This year, however, we got to see the real Optimus’ humble beginnings.
Tesla Autobots, Walk Out!
The Optimus bot wasn’t the only humanoid bot on display at the event.
We first saw BumbleCee, which was built out of “semi off-the-shelf” actuators, compared to the Optimus’ fully custom Tesla-built actuators. This bot took the team behind it only six months to build. That’s because of the non-custom hardware allowing BumbleCee to run. And by run, we mean walk. Slowly.
Before we got a look at what BumbleCee could do, the crowd was warned that this unveiling would be the first time it had walked on its own without a tether to keep it upright. And it went perfectly. BumbleCee walked out with about as much grace as you’d expect from a prototype bot. It even pulled off a few dance moves, albeit moves that could get you kicked out of the club.
After it completed its first steps, the crowd was shown a pre-recorded video detailing a little more of what it could do. We saw it pick up a box and deliver it to a separate office, water plants and perform hard labour. This is exactly what Musk has planned for these bots’ futures. He feels that if these humanoid bots become part of our daily lives, humanity would never need to do manual labour for money, ever again.
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Primed for release (in three to five years)
Next, it was time to see the main event – the Optimus bot. We got a look at the bot, which was dressed to look a bit more like the concept model we saw last year. In terms of performance, the Optimus bot should outperform BumbleCee in almost every way. That’s because the actuators and other components are all custom-built from Tesla’s own factory. This gives Tesla the ability to build everything perfectly at scale, all at a cheaper cost, too.
We barely got to see the Optimus bot do… anything. It was rolled onto the stage, rather than walking on itself. And that’s because it can’t actually walk. Yet. Once it was on stage it was able to wave to the crowd, while also putting on a (very) short demonstration of its dancing abilities. Musk believes that Optimus isn’t far from achieving its walking legs though. As time goes on, Tesla will continue to provide updates on Optimus’ progress.
Musk also gave us an idea of when we can expect these to become available to the public. He predicted a three-to-five-year wait to get these.
We know that Musk likes to hype his products up and under-deliver on delivery dates – which could see a few more years added to that original number. Once they are ready for the public, we can expect them to cost around $20,000 (or a bit less). We’ll update you if that day ever comes.
Source: The Verge