Boston Dynamics, now a subsidiary of automaker Hyundai, is justly famous for its groundbreaking innovations in robotics, including the Atlas bipedal robot. Videos posted by that company show the humanoid robot running and jumping and performing a variety of astonishing maneuvers.
Atlas, however, is not the only bipedal humanoid robot in town, so to speak. Tesla, the electric car company run by Elon Musk, is also working to build and commercialize its own bipedal humanoid robot, named Optimus.
On January 30, Musk, the world’s richest man, posted a video of Optimus to X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter. Musk simply called the video “Going for a Walk with Optimus.” The video shows the robot walking unaided.
Tesla unveiled the Optimus robot design in 2022 at its AI Day event to some degree of disdain from “experts.” First mention of the company’s interest in designing such a robot came a year earlier when a Musk presentation included a model dressed in a robot suit putting on a dance routine. At the time, tech blog The Verge said the event was “a distraction and an empty promise.” The Verge then quoted Carl Berry, described as “a lecturer in robotics” at a university in the U.K., dismissing the Tesla initiative.
“[Calling it] horse **** sounds generous, frankly,” Berry told The Verge.
Initial statements from Tesla have indicated that the Optimus bot should sell for around $20K and be used to do menial and repetitive tasks. An earlier video of the robot demonstrated it folding a shirt.
