Tesla has unveiled a new milestone for its Optimus humanoid robot, showcasing it walking autonomously outdoors in a recently released video. While fans are celebrating the achievement, the update serves as a reminder of CEO Elon Musk’s ambitious vision for Optimus as a “multi-trillion-dollar opportunity.”
Musk envisions Tesla eventually manufacturing tens of millions of these robots annually and has hinted at a potential retail price between $25,000 and $30,000, with plans to begin sales as early as next year. Tesla has already integrated Optimus robots into some factory operations and aims to expand to external customers soon.
Despite the advancements, skepticism remains, especially after Tesla disclosed limited details about the robots being remotely operated during its ‘We, Robot’ event. Frequent updates have highlighted Optimus’ progress, including the development of a highly functional hand for enhanced capabilities.
Now Tesla has released a video of Optimus walking outside:
Milan Kovac, Tesla’s head of Optmius, commented on the video:
These runs are on mulched ground, where I’ve myself slipped before. What’s really crazy here is that for these, Optimus is actually blind! Keeping its balance without video (yet), only other on-board sensors are consumed by a neural net running in ~2-3ms on its embedded computer.
The video is extremely similar to a video Boston Dynamics posted more than 8 year ago:
