Elon Musk’s ‘TeslaBot’ Video Draws Attention

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, has released a new video of the humanoid robot “Optimus”.

On the 24th, Musk posted a one-minute video of “Optimus”, currently under development by Tesla, walking around the lab on his social media, X (former Twitter).

This low-resolution video, posted with the simple caption, “Optimus wandering the lab,” garnered 77 million views in just two days, proving its high consumer interest. It has since been updated with a high-resolution video.

This is the first time in over a month that Musk has released a video of “Optimus”. On the 16th of last month, he released a 31-second video of Optimus folding a shirt on a table.

This robot is the 2nd generation version of “Optimus” that Tesla unveiled in December of last year. It walks about 30% faster than before and features more flexible finger movement to enable intricate tasks.

In the video released by Tesla, Optimus is seen dancing to music, doing yoga, and using its fingers as a pincer to lift an egg and place it on a pot.

Tesla first announced the development of a humanoid robot in 2021. When the Optimus prototype was unveiled at the end of September the following year, Musk stated, “The robot will create a future of abundance, a future without poverty.”

At the time, he also stated that the robots would be sold at around $20,000 per unit within the next 3-5 years, but since the details were not disclosed, some speculate that the production plan might be delayed.

However, despite high expectations, there are evaluations that Tesla’s humanoid robots fall behind those of other companies. Some companies are already using robots for delivery, and Boston Dynamics’s “Atlas”, which first introduced a humanoid robot in 2013, can perform various functions such as running, throwing objects, and jumping.