Optimus Robots, Self Driving Cars and Buses - Tesla's 'We Robot' Event and the Evolution of Optimus

Tesla Optimus Robot Serving Guests.
Image: Tesla

On the tenth of October Tesla held their 'We Robot' event, which I guess is the new incarnation of their previous Tesla AI Day annual event. There were three much talked about reveals, the driverless taxis, a driverless bus, and Optimus robots moving around the event, fully interacting with people 'on the ground'.

Tesla Driverless Taxi.
Image: Tesla

While it was cool to see so many driverless taxis, that you could get in and experience for yourself as they drove around the Warner Brothers lot, and the driverless bus was something of a surprise reveal nobody expected, my attention was on Optimus.

Tesla Driverless Robovan.
Image: Tesla

It was in September of 2021 that Elon Musk first announced his plan to create an affordable, humanoid, domestic robot, that would eventually be in homes worldwide. That vision was underlined with a person wearing a robot suit, that wasn't as well received as Elon may have liked, despite being a good visual of what the development team would be striving for.

Tesla Optimus, First Generation Concept to Gen 1.

A year later and Elon unveiled two humanoid prototypes. One a kind of 'proof' of concept made with off the shelf parts, the other a more streamlined model with custom Tesla designed parts. Neither model was particularly impressive, even for 2022, but it was clear progress had been made, and the second prototype kind of had some resemblance to the initial 'dancing man' vision.

December of 2023 Tesla announced the Optimus Gen II, a humanoid robot that looked very much closer to the dancing man vision of 2021.

While many were impressed by the Optimus robots interacting with the crowd at the WE Robot event, it has been confirmed that all these robots were actually operated by humans remotely and weren't using AI at all in their interactions.

Which for some, it seems, was disappointing but, from my point of view, was not entirely unexpected when recent behind the scenes footage on the Optimus project literally shows the robots being trained by human operators through remote operation.

Regardless I was still impressed by how far Optimus has come, and more importantly, how its development has pushed competition in the humanoid robotics space.

For example, 1X Technologies, a robotics company based in Norway and San Francisco, is focused on creating humanoid robots for your home, and plans to build 100,000 of its Neo Humanoid robots for the home by 2027. Which is not dissimilar to Tesla's timeline for getting Optimus into homes.

Prior to Optimus almost no one was taking the idea of humanoid robots in the home as a viable business model.

Personally I doubt I'll have have a full humanoid robot assistant in my home unless they come up with some kind of affordable leasing arrangement, the way they did for mobile phones. But I still like the idea of it.

Although I will be a little disappointed if the future is AI being built into all our appliances. I don't really want to have conversations with my dish washer, fridge, or drier about anything.

In the meantime I'll keep an eye on Tesla, and Optimus specifically. I honestly don't care if Elon doesn't actually meet his own deadlines when it comes to his projects. All that matters is that he continues to make progress.

Optimus Navigating Around

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