Tesla CEO Elon Musk claimed in January that he expected the Optimus humanoid robot business to generate sales of “more than $10 trillion,” but a recent video suggests there is still a lot of work to be done on the device.
In an embarrassing turn of events last weekend, Optimus lost his balance and fell to the ground during a special event called “Autonomy Visualized” held at a Tesla store in Miami.
As the video (below) shows, the robot appears to be reaching for a water bottle on a table, but somehow manages to knock over all the bottles around it. Then it falls backwards and lands on the ground.
But as numerous online commenters noted, the most interesting part of the clip is how the robot’s arms move toward its head the moment it loses control, suggesting that the robot was teleoperating at that point rather than acting autonomously. In other words, Optimus mimicked the movements of a Tesla engineer, who then pulled up his VR headset as the robot began to fall.
Teleoperation is still widely used in the development of humanoid robots, although Tesla has never explicitly stated that Optimus would be controlled via such a method. 1X Technologies recently opened pre-orders for its home robot helper called NEO, but admitted that more complex tasks will be completed using remote control during the testing phase as the company continues to work on developing its autonomous AI-powered smarts.
Now Tesla has yet to say what exactly caused the error, but the water bottle mishap and then the fainting episode seem to indicate that the company still has a long way to go before it can actually fulfill its promise to equip its car factories with the robot and perform various tasks alongside human workers.
Musk expects Optimus will eventually generate more revenue than Tesla’s car business, but given the Miami debacle four years in the making, many will be wondering if it will ever happen.
Because building a truly autonomous humanoid robot has become a multi-billion dollar race involving more and more technology companies around the world. The first to make this robot could end up dominating the market, and with companies like Unitree already producing some impressive-looking robots like the G1 and H1, Tesla appears to be far behind. But it must be said that even Unitree still has a lot of work to do before it can claim to have created a truly versatile, autonomous humanoid robot capable of competently performing a range of tasks, so everything is still up for grabs in the rapidly evolving sector.
