The Tesla Bot, priced at thirty thousand US dollars, can play rock-paper-scissors and dance, and it will be mass-produced for the public in 2026.

Written by Tian Zhe

Edited by Su Jianxun

In the studio of Warner Bros. Studios in California, several Tesla humanoid robots Optimus walked into the venue in a queue without assistance. In the exhibition area on the other side of the venue, an Optimus continuously delivered snacks to guests, greeted them, and interacted with them by playing rock-paper-scissors, etc.

The Tesla product launch with the theme of "We, Robot" announced two new products, including the driverless taxi Cybercab and the driverless passenger and cargo transport vehicle Robovan, and showcased the latest mobility capabilities of Optimus.

The humanoid robot Optimus is one of Tesla's most valued businesses. Tesla CEO Elon Musk predicts that Optimus will exceed the sum of Tesla's other businesses and create a market value of tens of trillions of dollars for Tesla.

Musk said that with future mass production, the price of Optimus will be reduced to $20,000 - $30,000. One of the reasons for the cost reduction is that some components of Tesla vehicles can be integrated into Optimus, including batteries, electronic devices, motors, software, AI inference devices, etc.

He once gave the mass production timeline of Optimus: small-scale production will begin in early 2025 and be used within Tesla first; by the end of that year, thousands of Optimus will be applied in Tesla factories; in 2026, Tesla will significantly increase the production of Optimus and sell it to the outside.

Enhanced Mobility and Visual Capabilities of Optimus

Optimus was first introduced in 2021. In the video released by Musk in May this year, Optimus has demonstrated the ability to fold clothes with both hands and sort batteries in the Tesla factory.

In May this year, Musk demonstrated Optimus folding clothes

But the Optimus shown today demonstrates that they have strong flexibility and visual capabilities.

In terms of flexibility, Optimus has achieved the ability to walk and dance without external assistance.

Several Optimus walking

Optimus collaborating to dance

At a table, Optimus can pick up the designated items from the table and hand them to the corresponding person. The entire process is as smooth and natural as a human's.

Picking up objects

In terms of vision, Optimus can also recognize human intentions and actively greet humans.

Greeting

In addition, when a human facing it makes a rock-paper-scissors gesture, Optimus can quickly recognize the intention and play rock-paper-scissors together.

Playing rock-paper-scissors

Tesla's demonstrated dexterous hand

For the further planning of Optimus, Musk once said that it will have conversation and communication functions. According to "The Biography of Musk", in April 2023, Musk proposed to the team to develop a competitor to the Chatgpt chatbot, using an algorithm and training dataset to ensure a politically neutral stance.

The data source is the information flow of the X platform. Every day, 500 million tweets are posted by X users worldwide, including various human conversations, news, interests, terms, etc. At the same time, the chatbot can also have conversations with real people on X to test human reactions to it.

Musk is confident in the research and development of large language model chatbots. He once said that if Tesla and Open.ai had to exchange tasks, with them manufacturing self-driving vehicles and Tesla manufacturing large language model chatbots, Tesla would be the winner.

Approaching Humanity Infinitely, Optimus to Become a Part of the Human Body

Walking the dog, picking up objects, cleaning the room... Musk's expectations for Optimus go far beyond this. He judges that the market demand for general-purpose humanoid robots will exceed 20 billion units. Optimus will enter homes and factories, becoming a companion in human life and even a carrier of consciousness.

He once said that in the future, Optimus may cooperate with his brain-computer interface company Neuralink. After the human brain is connected to the brain-computer interface, it can flexibly control the Optimus limbs on the body.

This requires that the appearance of Optimus be similar to that of a human in order to freely perform various human-like operations. "The Biography of Musk" mentions that Tesla has set Optimus as a bipedal humanoid robot with a height of about 1.72 meters, a weight of 57 kg, and smooth skin.

The dexterous hand is one of the key components of a humanoid robot. From the fingers to the shoulders, a human hand has 27 degrees of freedom. The higher the degree of freedom of the dexterous hand, the closer the number of actions that the robot can perform is to or even exceeds that of a human. However, increasing the degree of freedom not only means a significant increase in the difficulty of research and development, but also correspondingly increases the number of motors, raising the manufacturing cost of the robot.

Most humanoid robot companies choose to start with the development of two-finger or three-finger robots with lower research and development difficulty, with a degree of freedom of more than ten, and can only perform simple operations such as picking up or releasing objects by opening and closing.

The Tesla humanoid robot development team also once thought that only a four-finger robot needed to be developed because the little finger seemed to be of little use. However, considering that the robot's appearance should be close to that of a human and to achieve more functions, the team developed a five-finger robot. They extended the little finger to give it more functions, but each finger has only two joints instead of the three joints of a human finger.

After a year of iterations, Musk once said that the degree of freedom of the Optimus hand will double from 11 to 22, approaching the degree of freedom of a human hand, which means that Optimus can simulate the subtle movements of a human hand.

Tesla has also encountered the problem of high costs. Tesla has an electronic spreadsheet that records three ways of wrist movement in humans: up and down waving, left and right movement, and rotation. If two degrees of freedom are achieved, the cost of each wrist is $712. If all functions are to be achieved, additional actuators need to be added, and the cost will increase to $1103. Eventually, the team applied the liftgate actuator from the Tesla vehicle to Optimus, reducing the manufacturing cost.

In terms of task execution, Musk requires that Optimus be able to learn to complete various tasks by observing and imitating like a human.

For this reason, Tesla has equipped Optimus with a remote operation team of dozens of people. They must wear motion capture equipment and VR headsets to perform various designated actions and collect AI training data. In order to make the collected data more suitable for Optimus, Tesla requires that the height of the remote operation team members must be between 1.7 meters and 1.8 meters.

Tesla robot team engineer Milan Kovac once said that they have designed, trained, and deployed some of the first end-to-end humanoid robot neural networks, which can autonomously perform tasks that require coordinated control of the humanoid torso, arms, and entire hands. Through continuous training, Optimus has learned the ability to autonomously correct from failure cases.

In some details, Tesla also tries to make Optimus look more like a human. For example, Optimus' face looks like an androgynous elf, making Optimus appear more harmless; instead of turning the head to observe the surrounding environment, multiple cameras are installed.

While the appearance of Optimus is close to that of a human, the Tesla team also attempts to enhance Optimus based on human capabilities. For example, the strength of the linear actuator of the second-generation Optimus' legs is sufficient to lift a 500 kg piano.

Musk once said: "If you can build an autonomous electric vehicle, it is a robot with wheels. Similarly, you can also build a robot with legs."

Today, at a robot-themed conference, Tesla launched several autonomous vehicles, showcased the new developments of Optimus, and announced the company's transformation into a robot company, and Optimus will be the main engine for Tesla's rapid progress in the robot field.