Musk Demonstrates Optimus Humanoid Robot For Under $20,000

It was no surprise that Tesla’s AI 2022 kicked off with Optimus, the humanoid robot widely predicted to be the key announcement of the event. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any synchronized twerking with Elon Musk. But there has been significant development since last year, and now Elon Musk is promising to deliver a commercial product for less than $20,000.

In 2021, the Tesla robot demonstration was just a person in a bot suit. The Optimus name hadn’t even been devised yet. Fast forward to 2022, and a prototype gingerly walked on stage, waved at the crowd, and executed a few other hand gestures. This was allegedly the first time the robot had been demonstrated walking without its tether. Video then showed it carrying a box to an office desk, watering plants, and picking components at Tesla’s Freemont factory.

However, this wasn’t the production prototype, but a functional test mule called “Bumble C”. (Did you “C” what they did there – Bumble Bee/C? Transformers, like Optimus?) When they did bring onstage the Optimus bot they are developing in parallel, that had to be wheeled in by helpers and all it could do was wave. It also appeared to cease functioning as it was moved next to Elon Musk.

A production Optimus is clearly some way off and not likely to be in shops by next year, as Musk previously suggested in 2021. He didn’t make any promises about timing at this event. However, he did say it would “cost less than a car”, and “under $20,000”, which is typically bullish. The tech experts then outlined how they might achieve this.

After explaining that humans use about 100W at rest and 500W when walking briskly, one Tesla employee explained that they intended to drastically reduce the consumption of Optimus in comparison so that it could function all day using just a 2.3kWh Tesla battery pack and 52V subsystem. Considering the price and weight of batteries, this will keep the price frugal.

Another way that Tesla is planning to keep Optimus costs down is to reduce functionality compared to people, while still maintaining a useful level of capability. The human body has 200 degrees of freedom and 27 in the hand alone. Tesla aims to achieve similar features to a human by giving Optimus 28 structural actuators and just 11 degrees of freedom in its hands.

Tesla will be saving costs when full production begins by reducing the number of unique actuators it needs to make. Although it will be using 28 of them, careful evaluation has optimized these down to 6 different types that can be employed to supply all 28 functions. This is the kind of streamlining that is essential for commercial manufacturing.

Technologies will be shared with the Autopilot self-driving car program, too, including use of the same System-on-Chip as Autopilot employs in Tesla’s vehicles, and a lot of the same learning about navigation. However, cars have GPS and that doesn’t work indoors, nor are there detailed maps of most buildings’ furnished interiors. So Optimus will need to build world models itself visually. But there is a lot of similarity between a self-driving car (a robot on wheels) and a robot on legs.

Elon Musk still sees Optimus as a revolutionary product. At AI Day 2022, he claimed it could provide a doubling of economic output, and a fundamental transformation of civilization as we know it. But there are dangers, and he admitted that Tesla “needs to do things carefully and safely”, because he didn’t want to “pave the road to hell with good intentions”.

That’s a real threat, because there are essentially two directions civilization could go once a cheap, feature-rich humanoid robot becomes available. One will be utopian, where nobody needs to work so hard, all our basic needs are met, and the quality of life for the poor is raised to an acceptable level.

The other option is more dystopian, where anyone with equal or less capability than Optimus will be out of a job, on the street, and surplus to requirement. In that scenario, modified weaponized bots could well be needed by the wealthier in society to keep those who have been displaced at bay.

Musk clearly realizes this dilemma and has talked about universal basic income in the past, and it’s early days yet. Right now, Optimus isn’t much more capable than Sony’s robot dog toy, aibo. But development is moving fast, considering Optimus was just a guy in a leotard a year ago, and now it can walk, carry boxes, and water your garden. If Tesla can deliver a finished product for $20,000, it really could be a revolution, and possibly one with even more impact on society than the electric car.

There was a whole lot more demonstrated at Tesla AI Day 2022, including updates on the FSD program. You can view a recording of the event on Tesla’s website.